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THE   YOKE   OF   PITY 


THE   YOKE   OF  PITY 

(  L'O  RDINA  TION) 

BY 

JULIEN   BENDA 


TRANSLATED  BY 

GILBERT  CANNAN 


LONDON 

T.   FISHER  UNWIN 

ADELPHI   TERRACE 


Copyright,  London  1913,  by  T.  Fisher  Unwin 
and  Washington,  U.S.A.,  by  Henry  Holt  and  Company 


-  ASCENT     . 


^ 

DOWNFALL 
•  AUTHOR'S  NOTE  . 
S 


CONTENTS 


PART  I 


PART  II 


PAGK 

1 


.      95 

,    173 


PART  I 
ASCENT 


THE  boy,  Pierre,  went  up  to  bed  and  they 
were  left  alone,  as  they  had  been  on  several 
evenings  before,  at  the  bottom  of  the  garden. 
They  talked  a  little  about  their  afternoon's 
excursion  and  the  beauty  of  the  night  and 
then  were  silent. 

They  were  silent  for  a  long  time.  .  .  .  They 
began  to  feel  increasingly  conscious  of  the 
oppression  of  their  mutual  acquiescence  in  the 
silence.  .  .  .  The  lights  of  the  hotel  were  put 
out.  Each  was  aware  that  the  other  had 
seen  them  go  out  and  made  no  move  to  return. 
They  felt  that  they  were  sinking  down  into 
complicity.  .  .  .  Their  hands  touched  and 
their  eyes  met  in  mingled  love  and  reproach, 
as  though  each  of  the  lovers  were  reproaching 
the  other  with  the  eternity  of  time  during 
which  they  had  not  recognised  each  other. 

He  took  her  back  to  the  door  of  the  hotel, 
feeling  and  respecting  her  desire  for  inward 


4  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

preparation  in  delay  for  their  utter  union. 
He  loved  her  desire  and  the  respect  he  had 
for  it,  for  he  loved  rather  the  elegancy  of  love 
than  love  itself. 

Next  day,  they  were  walking  together  on 
the  hill,  thrilling  with  the  kiss  which  they 
made  no  attempt  to  recall,  drinking  in  their 
profound  communion  through  the  most  trivial 
acts  of  sharing,  happy  in  their  promise  of  love, 
happy,  yet  not  joyous. 

They  passed  down  the  slope  leading  to  the 
garden  and  sat  halfway  up  the  hill.  For  sev- 
eral minutes  together  she  mused.  Then  she 
said: 

"  I  am  afraid,  Felix  ...  I  am  afraid  lest 
I  should  not  satisfy  you.  .  .  .  You  belong  to 
a  brilliant  world.  .  .  .  Your  mother,  your  sis- 
ters, are  smart  women  .  .  .  the  women  who 
loved  you  before  were  like  them.  .  .  .  But  I 
am  just  an  ordinary  bourgeoise.  .  .  ." 

He  said: 

"I  hate  all  that,  my  heart  is  not  in  it.  I 
have  found  only  lies  in  it:  lies  of  talent,  lies 


ASCENT  5 

of  beauty,  lies  of  love.  .  .  .  Only  during  the 
past  month  have  I  found  truth,  Madeleine, 
only  since  I  have  known  you.  I  love  your 
modest  way  of  dressing.  It  is  so  true.  .  .  ." 
So,  it  seemed  to  him,  his  will  overcame  his 
habits  and  fervently  he  came  to  the  religion 
of  the  humble. 

That  day  she  told  him  all  her  life.  She 
told  him  of  her  sad  childhood :  her  cold,  proud 
mother:  her  elder  sister's  jealousy,  her  father, 
who  alone  had  loved  her,  her  father  whom  she 
had  lost  so  soon.  .  .  .  She  told  him  of  her 
marriage  to  a  man  much  older  than  herself, 
a  pompous  disillusioned  man,  who  was  galled 
by  any  kind  of  happiness  and  resentful  at 
her  youth.  .  .  .  Then  of  her  first  child,  still- 
born. .  .  .  Then  of  the  boy  Pierre,  and  the 
perpetual  irritation  he  was  to  her  in  his  re- 
semblance to  his  father  .  .  .  and  of  the  hos- 
tility of  her  husband's  relations.  .  .  .  She  told 
him  of  the  silence,  the  emptiness,  the  fast 
captivity  of  her  life. 

She  raised  her  eyes: 


6  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

"Ah!"  she  said,  laying  her  hand  on  his 
arm,  "  You  are  the  only  creature  in  the  whole 
world  who  has  ever  shed  a  tear  for  me." 

He  made  her  tell  him  more  and  began  to 
discover  the  charm  of  compassion. 

At  night,  when  all  were  asleep,  she  stood 
trembling  behind  her  door,  waiting  for  him. 
.  .  .  He  came.  .  .  .  She  fell  into  his  arms. 
He  pressed  her  to  him,  and  not  the  grace  and 
beauty  of  her  body  moved  him  so  much  as  its 
surrender.  .  .  . 

He  looked  round  her  room.  .  .  .  He  loved 
her  simple  things  lying  folded  on  a  chair,  her 
little  common  watch  hanging  above  the  bed. 

So,  until  morning,  they  drank  the  poison. 

Each  night  he  came  to  her.  .  .  .  They 
laughed  at  the  pains  they  now  took  to  be  to- 
gether less  during  the  daytime.  .  .  .  Their 
attraction  for  each  other  gained  with  use. 


ASCENT  7 

He  felt  that,  and,  making  Madeleine  feel  it 
too,  he  attached  her  to  himself. 

Often  they  would  talk  of  their  first  kiss, 
their  first  coming  together.  They  would  say 
how  they  had  never  thought  of  it  as  a  new 
thing,  or  as  a  surprise,  or  as  marking  any  dif- 
ference in  themselves.  .  .  .  Their  love  had 
wished  to  have  no  beginning.  .  .  .  And  their 
hands  had  joined:  neither  had  taken  the 
other.  .  .  . 

So  they  tried  to  do  away  with  the  idea  of 
a  definite  act,  to  lose  consciousness  in  the 
indeterminate. 

The  boy,  Pierre,  fell  ill.  She  did  not  go 
out  for  two  days.  He  asked  after  him  almost 
hourly.  .  .  .  Together  with  hands  clasped 
they  leaned  over  the  child  as  he  lay  asleep. 
.  .  .  He  enjoyed  the  absence  in  himself  of 
male  egoism,  and  sharing  in  the  sorrows  of  the 
woman  he  had  taken.  He  took  his  taste  for 
this  elegancy  for  love. 


8  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

They  returned  to  Paris. 

Gravely,  piously  he  set  about  binding  rela- 
tions with  her  and  arranging  for  the  con- 
struction of  the  intrigue. 

He  began  by  breaking  as  much  as  possible 
with  everything  that  was  not  related  to 
Madeleine. 

He  held  more  aloof  than  ever  from  his 
own  people,  avoiding  their  dinners  and  teas 
and  jests  and  chatter  about  actors  and  tailors. 
.  .  .  He  hated  his  sisters  and  their  craze  for 
pleasure  and  being  seen  in  society.  .  .  .  He 
thought  he  detested  their  luxury.  He  tried 
not  to  see  how  Madeleine's  simplicity  discon- 
certed him  even  more  in  the  town  than  in  the 
hills. 

There  was  a  woman  waiting  for  him  to 
whom  he  had  not  written  all  summer.  He 
broke  with  her,  brutally,  against  all  tradition, 
without  even  taking  the  trouble  to  keep  her 
friendly  towards  him.  As  she  was  rich  and 


ASCENT  9 

popular  he  told  himself  that  she  could  not 
suffer. 

He  left  his  friends.  Their  ambition  worried 
him.  Their  love-making  disgusted  him. 

He  flung  aside  his  papers,  his  would-be 
serious  books,  and  lost  all  interest  in  public 
life  and  society.  Such  things  seemed  to  him 
to  be  but  a  theft  from  love.  He  wanted  to 
believe  that  love  is  nothing  if  it  be  not  every- 
thing. .  .  .  How  he  despised  the  worldly 
love  that  does  not  engross  the  whole  of  a 
man's  mind  and  heart!  .  .  . 

He  gave  up  a  flat  he  had  outside  Paris,  for 
other  women  had  been  to  it.  He  wished  to 
receive  her  in  a  new  setting.  .  .  .  On  the  few 
days  when  she  could  not  come  to  him  he  went 
and  lived  there,  wrote  there,  dreamed  there, 
sought  to  find  her  in  the  choice  of  a  piece  of 
stuff,  the  arrangement  of  the  flowers.  .  .  . 
And  on  the  days  when  she  had  visited  him, 
sometimes  in  the  evening  he  would  return 
alone,  once  more  in  the  disordered  room  to 
taste  the  mingling  of  their  souls,  to  sleep 


10  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

where  she  had  lain,  to  feel  still  that  she  was 
there.  So  afraid  was  he  of  too  soon  return- 
ing to  consciousness  of  himself  apart  from 
her. 

He  bound  her  to  him  by  the  joys  she  had 
in  him,  the  joys  he  desired  her  to  find,  by  the 
need  she  had  of  him,  the  need  he  desired  her 
to  have.  She  was  bound  to  him  by  the  su- 
preme surrender  to  which  she  agreed  and  by 
her  own  betrayal  of  her  sex  in  the  confession 
of  her  desires.  She  was  bound  to  him  by  her 
immodesty,  by  her  desire  to  taste  the  fulness 
of  it.  ...  He  aggravated  the  binding  power 
of  the  audacities  of  love,  by  his  subtlety  in 
finding  meanings  in  them.  .  .  .  Also  they  ex- 
plored and  exploited  the  eternity  of  Love; 
and  they  did  not  escape  the  feeling  of  its 
likeness  to  Death.  .  .  . 

She  allowed  him  to  come  to  her  house. 
.  .  .  He  tried  to  ignore  the  awkwardness  of 
his  first  visit;  he  tried  to  persuade  himself 
that  he  loved  the  little,  dark,  low-ceilinged 


ASCENT  11 

flat,  and  the  little  people  who  lived  their  nar- 
row existence  in  it.  ...  For  her  her  prison 
was  flooded  with  sunlight.  She  could  not  en- 
dure it  unless  he  came  often.  .  .  .  He  calmly 
accepted  the  need  she  had  of  him  and  knew 
perfectly  how  his  calmness  bound  her  to  him. 

She  preserved  a  certain  amount  of  coquetry, 
a  certain  taste  for  feeling  her  power  over 
men  .  .  .  and  also  she  kept  to  herself  a  cer- 
tain secret,  a  few  little  old  love-passages  of 
which  she  told  him  nothing.  .  .  .  Gently,  with- 
out asking  her  for  anything,  he  led  her  to  sur- 
render of  all  these  things.  .  .  .  So  he  stripped 
her  of  her  pride,  the  one  thing  that  could 
support  her  if  ever  he  should  cease  to  love 
her;  so  he  left  her  with  no  corner  of  her  soul 
that  she  could  call  her  own,  and  crept  into 
and  filled  her  whole  being.  ..."  Think," 
she  would  say,  tremblingly,  "  think  what  it 
would  be  if  you  were  to  come  to  me  one  day 
and  tell  me  that  I  must  fall  back  into  my- 
self. .  .  ."  He  was  aware  of  his  responsi- 
bility. He  loved  it. 


12  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

What  amazing  skill  he  had  in  his  fidelity 
to  her!  With  what  artistry  he  indulged  in 
self-denunciation  for  his  acts  of  omission,  his 
little  thefts  from  his  beloved,  thefts  concern- 
ing which  he  knew  cowardly  that  she  could 
say  nothing, — having  no  power  of  analysis, 
no  mastery  of  words, — thefts  also  which  one 
knows  must  hurt  her!  With  what  artistry 
he  denied  himself  the  least  pleasure  in  pleas- 
ing others!  .  .  .  All  other  men,  all  other 
women  seemed  unfaithful  to  him. 

He  enjoyed  the  sensation  of  being  insensi- 
ble to  all  other  women.  He  cultivated  his 
absolute  absorption  in  the  Only  One. 

With  what  subtle  ingenuity  did  he  free 
himself  altogether  of  independence!  He  told 
her  everything  he  did,  everything  he  thought. 
.  .  .  And  in  the  evenings  he  would  see  men 
and  women  asking  those  whom  they  believed 
to  be  their  lovers  what  they  had  been  doing 
during  the  day!  Poor  men  and  women!  As 


ASCENT  13 

if  your  lover  ever  waited  to  be  asked  to  tell 
his  doings! 

Often  she  would  deplore  the  fact  that  he 
was  so  young — hardly  two  years  older  than 
she — and  she  would  worry  about  the  future. 
...  In  ten  years  she  would  be  thirty-five. 
.  .  .  But  he  would  love  her  still!  And  he 
would  always  succeed  in  making  her  share 
his  faith.  And  he  loved  the  feeling  that  this 
faith  of  his  own  creation  bound  him  more 
closely  to  her  than  ever. 

So  he  sank  deep  into  fidelity,  into  depend- 
ence, into  an  insoluble  relationship. 

* 

*       * 

Summer  came.  She  went  to  stay  with  her 
boy  in  a  village  in  the  forest  of  *  *  *.  He 
stayed  a  few  miles  away  to  throw  his  people 
off  the  scent.  ...  In  the  evening,  at  curfew, 
he  would  steal  out  and  go  across  the  forest 
and  sit  down  under  the  trees:  at  a  given  sig- 
nal he  would  go  up  to  her  house  and  she 


14  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

would  open  her  window.  .  .  .  He  would  re- 
turn at  dawn  and  sleep  until  midday,  sunk 
deep  into  a  drowsiness  that  still  bathed  him 
in  her  atmosphere. 

Ah!  the  first  time  he  came  to  her!  How 
joyful  he  was — walking  along  the  open  road, 
far,  far  away  from  casinos  and  palatial  hotels 
— to  feel  that  through  her  he  was  discovering 
space,  the  wide  air,  the  open  sky,  his  own 
strength,  his  youth,  the  upward  impulse  of 
his  being!  How  joyful  he  was — hastening  to 
the  woman  through  the  mighty  forest,  seem- 
ing mightier  in  its  darkness  and  silence — to 
feel  that  through  her  he  was  discovering  a 
kind  of  new  consciousness,  unknown  in  the 
polite  world,  the  consciousness  of  love  linked 
to  the  ordering  of  the  universe!  And,  when 
he  reached  her  room,  and  in  enchantment 
moved  about  the  little  room  that  she  had 
made  so  living  with  such  little  things — a  piece 
of  stuff  on  the  table  or  a  fan  on  the  wall — 
how  joyful  he  was  to  feel  that  through  her 
he  was  discovering  woman,  her  art,  her  skill 


ASCENT  15 

in  invention.  .  .  .  What  could  he  know  of 
the  genius  of  woman  from  the  women  of  his 
world  who  found  everything  ready  to  their 
hands?  .  .  .  — How  much  more  closely  were 
they  drawn  together  on  that  night  of  re- 
union. They  were  more  dear  to  each  other 
in  the  audacity  of  their  meeting,  in  their  un- 
usual surroundings,  in  their  defiance  of  the 
world:  they  were  more  united  in  the  mystery 
of  it  all,  in  their  adoration  of  that  mystery 
.  .  .  above  all  they  were  bound  in  the  worship 
of  the  Bond. 

Fearful  at  heart  she  would  watch  him  go 
away  in  the  morning,  in  the  cold  and  the 
rain.  .  .  .  One  evening  he  came  two  hours 
late.  He  had  lost  his  way.  A  pile  of  wood 
that  marked  a  turning  had  been  removed. 
He  found  her  almost  beside  herself.  .  .  .  He 
was  more  nearly  drawn  to  her  through  the 
anxiety  he  caused  her. 

How  thoroughly  he  felt,  and  wished  to  feel, 
the  peculiar  conjunction  that  binds  lovers  in 


16  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

the  presence  of  nature;  the  abolition  of  their 
social  personalities,  the  eternal  reminder  of 
their  duality;  the  truth  of  their  mutual  at- 
traction, now  that  it  was  freed  from  the  ex- 
citements of  the  town;  and  how  he  felt  the 
fleeting  nature  of  their  union  and  its  eternity 
...  a  simple  flashing  into  consciousness  of 
the  infinite  desire  that  was  written  in  every- 
thing about  them. 

One  day, — a  short  time  after  their  arrival — 
she  was  able  to  escape.  She  came  to  meet 
him  in  the  woods.  .  .  .  They  sat  side  by  side 
on  the  great  trunk  of  a  dead  tree  lying  by  the 
road.  She  put  her  arm  round  her  lover's 
neck: 

"Darling,"  she  said  softly,  "You  don't 
find  this  life  boring?  Alone  all  day  long!  .  .  . 
And  you  don't  dislike  the  little  room  you  have 
taken  over  there,  do  you?  It  is  such  a  change 
for  you.  .  .  .  You  used  to  spend  the  summer 
in  such  gay  places.  .  .  ." 

He  said: 

"  I  am  happy.    I  am  not  alone  during  the 


ASCENT  17 

day.  I  live  in  memory  and  in  expectation. 
...  I  love  my  little  room  and  my  simple 
life.  .  .  .  And  love  can  only  grow  strong  in 
austerity." 

She  adored  the  memory  of  their  smallest 
happiness,  and  would  piously  preserve  a  scrap 
of  paper  or  a  flower  that  they  had  gathered 
together.  '  You  understand,"  she  would 
say.  ..."  Other  men  laugh  at  our  childish- 
ness! "  And  he  would  scorn  such  men. 

She  fell  ill,  and  was  forced  to  keep  indoors, 
and  to  take  the  greatest  care  of  herself.  He 
would  come  in  the  evening,  when  she  was  left 
alone,  and  sit  by  her  bedside,  and  console 
her  and  tend  her,  and  watch  himself  rising 
from  love  to  devotion,  and  take  a  subtle, 
proud  joy  in  forgetting  the  attraction  of  her 
body  and  helping  her  and  setting  up  their 
communion  in  sorrow  above  their  sex-antag- 
onism. Often  she  would  ask  him  to  lie  down 
by  her  side  and  she  would  sleep  in  his  arms. 
.  .  .  And  more  strongly  than  ever  he  was 


18  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

bound  to  her  by  the  veneration  which  he 
found  in  himself  for  her  frailty,  her  slumber; 
by  the  acrid  delight  he  was  able  to  find  in 
living  without  her  for  her  sake. 

November.  They  were  still  in  the  country. 
He  came  to  her  now  over  the  river  of  dead 
leaves.  .  .  .  They  clung  to  each  other  more 
closely  to  defy  the  death  of  their  woods. 

They  had  great  fires  which  lit  up  all  the 
room.  .  .  .  And,  pressed  close  together,  they 
would  dream  how  yonder,  in  the  town,  there 
were  dinners  and  theatres,  and  triumph  and 
hatred. 

Came  their  last  night.  The  last  time  that 
he  would  come  to  her  room.  .  .  .  She  had 
packed  up.  There  was  no  gay  cloth  on 
the  table,  no  fan  on  the  wall.  .  .  .  He  clung 
to  her.  So  "  their "  room  was  dead,  their 
room  that  had  held  five  months  of  their  youth. 
.  .  .  Their  youth  would  stay  there,  lost  in 
the  forest,  eternally,  while  they — they  would 
be  elsewhere,  would  pass  and  die  .  .  .  and 


ASCENT  19 

coarse  peasants  would  sleep  in  the  room 
to-morrow.  .  .  .  And  next  year  it  would  be 
let  to  others.  .  .  . 

He  clung  to  her  to  suppress  his  doubts. 
.  .  .  What  proof  had  he  that  it  had  ever 
been? 

He  clung  to  her  to  ward  off  the  future, 
for  protection  against  himself.  .  .  .  Some- 
thing told  him  that  their  happiness  would 
never  come  again,  that  he  would  not  wish  it 
to  return. 

He  had  to  go.  Slowly  she  opened  the  win- 
dow. He  went  out.  Away.  Often  he  turned 
and  threw  kisses  to  her.  .  .  .  Then  he  walked 
on  for  a  long  time  without  turning.  .  .  .  As 
he  came  to  the  corner  he  turned  once  more. 
She  was  still  there  at  the  window.  Then 
blindly  he  rushed  to  her,  kissed  her  madly, 
went  away  at  a  run,  stifling  his  sobs,  and 
never  turned  again. 

* 

*       * 

They  returned  to  the  town.     He  resumed 


20  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

the  mode  of  living  of  the  past  winter;  never 
going  into  society,  staying  alone  or  with  her 
in  their  flat,  going  to  see  her  at  her  house.  .  .  . 
He  became  conscious  of  the  monotony  of  his 
life.  He  loved  it.  It  seemed  to  him  to  have 
something  of  the  quality  of  a  great  work  of 
art.  And  he  was  happy  in  Madeleine's  hap- 
piness. And  he  was  proud  of  his  love.  Proud 
of  his  seriousness.  Of  his  faithfulness.  Proud 
of  being  necessary.  .  .  . 


II 

ONE  morning  Felix  woke  up  about  six 
o'clock.  It  was  June.  He  thought  of  the  ap- 
pointment he  had  made  with  Madeleine  for 
the  day.  .  .  .  He  thought  that  in  a  few  days 
she  would  be  leaving  for  the  country,  and 
how  he  would  go  and  lodge  near  her  and 
resume  the  old  mode  of  living  that  they  had 
adopted  during  the  previous  summer:  living 
alone  with  her,  for  several  months,  far  away 
from  the  world.  .  .  .  But  now  his  thoughts 
brought  him  none  of  the  joy  that  he  expected. 
Only  a  strange  feeling.  A  vague  uneasiness. 
A  feeling  that  he  did  not  understand,  while 
it  persisted  and  disturbed  him.  Suddenly,  in 
a  flash,  the  idea  of  his  liaison  stifled  him  with 
a  feeling  of  anguish;  it  seemed  to  him  to  be 
like  an  absolute,  everlasting  captivity.  In 
terror  he  sat  up  in  his  bed.  Did  he  love 
Madeleine  less?  Was  his  life  with  her  op- 
pressing him?  .  .  .  As  in  a  flash  of  lightning 

21 


22  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

he  saw  the  hugeness  of  such  a  calamity  and 
dismissed  the  idea,  not  without  perceiving 
that  his  chief  reason  for  doing  so  was  that 
it  was  too  horrible.  ...  It  was  insane!  Can 
a  man  cease  to  love  like  that?  Suddenly? 
For  no  reason?  Oh,  come!  He  was  still  the 
same.  He  was  happy.  .  .  .  Now  he  was 
calm  again.  .  .  .  Quite  calm.  .  .  .  He  began 
to  smile  at  the  thought  of  his  beloved,  still 
sleeping.  She  would  soon  be  awake.  And 
when  she  awoke  she  too  would  think  of  their 
meeting.  .  .  .  And  suddenly  he  was  once 
more  filled  with  anguish.  He  had  just  be- 
come conscious  of  a  frightful  discord  between 
Madeleine's  eagerness  for  the  meeting  and  his 
own  feeling  of  repugnance. 

Then,  extremely  agitated,  he  got  up,  drew 
on  his  clothes  fumblingly  in  a  sort  of  semi- 
consciousness  which  terrified  him.  Then  he 
went  out.  He  walked  blindly  on,  swiftly, 
mechanically,  haggardly,  like  a  man  who  has 
just  heard  that  some  terrible  misfortune  has 
befallen  him,  the  full  extent  of  which  he  does 
not  yet  know,  though  know  it  he  inevitably 


ASCENT  23 

must.  .  .  .  Yes.  His  life  with  her  had  op- 
pressed him,  had  been  oppressing  him  for  a 
long  time.  He  could  no  longer  disguise  it 
from  himself.  What  had  just  happened  to 
him  was  the  breaking  of  a  calamity  which 
for  many  months  had  lain  dormant  to  his  un- 
conscious suffering,  which  he  had  refused  to 
admit  to  himself.  .  .  .  But  what  he  now  felt 
— and  with  what  anguish! — was  the  impossi- 
bility of  changing  his  life,  the  vast  network 
of  subtle  and  firm  ties  in  which  he  had  en- 
meshed himself,  while  he  had  cut  himself  off 
from  the  power  to  break  free,  or  the  right  to 
do  so;  the  utter  need  of  himself  that  it  had 
delighted  him  to  create  in  the  woman,  and 
the  entire  confidence,  the  absolute  depend- 
ence, the  disintegration  of  her  pride,  the  dis- 
gust with  the  world,  the  eternal  love  which 
he  had  taught  her,  love  making  no  provision 
for  change,  and  the  terrible  union  of  souls 
that  of  the  past  two  years  he  had  forced  upon 
her,  an  union  which  she  could  not  do  without, 
and  could  not  look  for  in  any  other  man.  .  .  . 
And  he  must  smile  and  smile  in  such  a  prison, 


24  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

appear  as  happy  in  it  as  on  their  first  day.  .  .  . 
And  this  was  to  go  on  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 
For  never,  never  would  he  dare  to  speak.  .  .  . 
And  he  went  on  walking  frenziedly,  either  be- 
cause he  was  trying  to  divert  his  thoughts  by 
movement  or  because  in  it  he  found  some 
solace  for  his  sense  of  captivity. 

He  walked  on  and  on.  ...  And  the  idea 
of  being  in  prison  waxed  greater  and  greater, 
increased  and  multiplied,  became  absolute,  his 
one  idea,  the  thought  of  the  approaching 
meeting,  of  dining  at  her  house  on  the  mor- 
row, of  some  other  engagement  in  two  days' 
time.  .  .  .  And  the  same  thing  all  over  again 
during  the  following  week.  .  .  .  Then  the 
summer.  Alone  with  her.  Only  with  her, 
hypnotised,  stationary,  with  her.  For  months 
together.  .  .  .  And  nature  solemnising  every- 
thing! .  .  .  And  the  nights  with  her!  Silence 
and  the  night!  The  tedious  oppressive  love 
of  the  woman  he  no  longer  loved,  made  over- 
whelming, made  eternal,  by  the  silence  and 
the  night!  Absolute  bondage!  It  was  too 
frightful.  He  would  find  some  excuse.  He 


ASCENT  25 

would  not  go.  Then  he  thought  of  the 
dresses  she  had  made  for  the  summer,  for 
him.  She  had  shown  him  them.  She  had 
been  so  happy.  .  .  .  He  would  go !  He  knew 
that  he  would  go!  ...  More  frenziedly  still 
he  walked  on  and  on,  as  though  he  hoped  to 
wear  out  the  power  of  his  uneasiness  by  mov- 
ing, moving.  .  .  . 

He  walked  on  and  on.  .  .  .  For  a  moment, 
worn  out,  he  sank  on  to  a  seat.  Having  less 
capacity  for  suffering,  life  seemed  just  toler- 
able to  him.  He  would  cling  to  his  life  with 
her!  .  .  .  Then,  suddenly,  he  called  to  mind 
the  image  of  Madeleine  dressing,  doing  her 
hair,  happy,  gay,  confiding.  .  .  .  And  he 
could  no  longer  bear  to  sit  still. 

He  walked  on  and  on.  .  .  .  Every  now 
and  then  he  would  suddenly  feel  reassured. 
.  .  .  It  was  idiotic!  He  loved  her  just  the 
same!  .  .  .  Were  there  not  a  thousand  rea- 
sons why  he  should  love  her?  .  .  .  But  he 
knew  the  vanity  of  his  belief.  And  the  mere 
fact  of  his  clinging  to  his  love  was  sufficient 
assurance  that  it  was  slipping  away  from 


26  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

him.  And  it  seemed  to  him  that  it  was  slip- 
ping away  from  minute  to  minute  with  ever- 
increasing  rapidity.  .  .  .  Ah!  How  horrible, 
horrible  it  is,  he  said  to  himself  later  on  (for 
he  never  forgot  that  morning)  for  a  man  to 
feel  that  his  heart  is  being  drained  dry,  under 
his  very  eyes,  and  him  to  be  unable  to  do 
anything. 

He  went  walking  on  and  on.  Ten  o'clock. 
In  four  hours  he  would  see  Madeleine  again. 
Never  had  he  been  so  impatient,  so  eager  to 
see  her  again.  The  reason  was  (so  he  told 
himself)  that  he  was  thinking  how,  as  soon 
as  he  saw  her  again,  he  would  feel  that  he 
loved  her  just  as  much  as  ever  and  his  night- 
mare would  be  gone.  .  .  .  The  real  reason — 
as  he  had  to  admit  later  on — was  that  he  had 
a  vague  feeling  that  in  spite  of  himself  the 
fading  of  his  love  would  be  clear  to  the  eyes 
of  his  beloved  and  he  would  at  once  feel  a 
certain  solace  and  relief  from  lying  and  de- 
ception. 

He  reached  a  horrible  desolate  place  and 


ASCENT  27 

sank  down  by  the  roadside.  .  .  .  He  wished 
to  die.  So  he  would  avoid  what  had  always 
been  to  him  the  most  dreadful  element  in 
death ;  that  it  might  come  when  he  was  happy. 
.  .  .  When  he  was  happy!  ...  So  he  still 
thought  that  he  could  be  happy?  .  .  .  He 
groaned  under  the  feeling  that  he  was  still 
used  to  the  idea  of  happiness. 

He  thought  of  all  the  men  he  knew.  .  .  . 
He  heard  them  saying,  as  men  have  done 
since  the  beginning  of  time:  "  What  a  pother 
about  nothing!  You  don't  love  her  any  more? 
Let  her  go."  .  .  .  And  he  was  overcome  with 
a  new  distress:  the  certain  knowledge  that 
he  was  alone  in  his  misery,  that  he  could  talk 
of  it  to  no  one;  and  the  idea  that  he  was  in 
some  sort  singular  in  his  sorrow. 

And  he  kept  on  saying  to  himself :  "  Why 
do  I  no  longer  love  her?  Why  do  I  no  longer 
love  her?  .  .  ."  But  he  was  acutely  conscious 
of  the  puerility  of  his  stupor  and  his  belief 
in  a  "mystery";  he  knew  that  there  were 


28  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

reasons  why  he  no  longer  loved  her,  and  that 
they  were  not  very  subtle  and  could  easily  be 
discovered  if  he  would  dare  to  look  for  them. 

He  went  home,  sat  down  to  lunch  but  ate 
hardly  anything.  He  marked  the  astonish- 
ment of  his  people  and  the  servants.  He 
understood  that  a  fresh  torment  lay  in  wait 
for  him,  the  effort  to  conceal  his  suffering 
from  them.  .  .  .  He  hated  them  for  their 
solicitude,  which  was  as  a  mirror  to  show  him 
his  unhappiness. 

Two  o'clock.  He  lay  back  on  the  divan, 
as  worn  out  as  though  he  had  been  waiting, 
watching  for  ten  days,  irritated  by  the  furni- 
ture, awake,  anxiously  expecting  Madeleine. 
She  came  in  joyfully.  He  took  her  in  his 
arms,  embraced  her  desperately  in  his  obscure 
consciousness  of  the  hurt  he  was  bound  to 
deal  her.  She  was  vaguely  surprised  at  it, 
for  a  moment.  .  .  .  She  thought  him  pale 
and  looking  so  tired!  .  .  .  He  invented  ex- 
cuses. She  sat  down  by  his  side  and  told  him 


ASCENT  29 

what  she  had  been  doing  during  the  last  two 
days  —  how  bored  she  had  been,  and  what  she 
had  enjoyed,  her  smallest  thought.  He  lis- 
tened, with  his  arm  round  her  waist,  his  eyes 
gazing  into  hers,  filled  with  a  sweet  tenderness 
for  the  confidence  she  gave  him,  and  he  was 
resolved  to  suffer  everything  rather  than  fail 
her.  .  .  .  Lovingly,  tenderly,  she  desired 
more.  Ardently,  piously  he  kissed  her  over 
and  over  again.  .  .  . 

Never  had  he  been  so  passionate.  But  she 
looked  at  him  gravely  and,  for  the  first  time 
since  she  had  known  him,  she  said: 

"Do  you  love  me?" 


From  that  day  on,  in  revolt  or  acquies- 
cence, stinging  or  heart-breaking,  the  idea  of 
being  imprisoned  never  left  him. 

Sometimes  in  the  country  he  would  see  a 
happy  couple,  escaping  from  the  world,  blithe 


30  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

and  gay  in  their  beloved  bondage;  sometimes 
in  society  he  would  see  a  lover,  the  untroubled 
possessor  of  some  beautiful  smart  woman, 
obviously  independent  of  any  need  for  ten- 
derness; sometimes  in  a  book  he  would  find 
some  fictitious  character  who  went  straight 
to  his  appointed  end  absolutely  absolved  from 
affection.  .  .  .  Anything  and  everything 
served  to  make  him  feel  his  slavery.  .  .  .  And 
he  had  no  other  consciousness  except  as  a 
prisoner.  And  he  dated  all  the  other  events 
of  his  life  by  that  consciousness;  of  anything 
that  he  read  or  heard  he  always  thought:  It 
was  before,  or  after.  .  .  . 

He  tried  to  cheat  his  malady.  And  some- 
times he  escaped  it.  But  he  could  not  escape 
the  sorrow  of  knowing  that  he  was  cheat- 
ing. .  .  .  Could  he  make  himself  believe :  "  I 
do  not  love  her  less,  but  differently  "  ?  He 
recognised  his  ingenuousness.  .  .  .  And  again, 
when  he  saw  other  men,  he  would  think: 
"  They  have  all  known  their  affections  to 
change.  And  they  have  been  able  to  bear  it. 


ASCENT  31 

.  .  .  Well,  I  will  do  as  they  have  done."  But 
he  knew  how  dishonest  he  was  in  trying  to 
believe  himself  to  be  "  like  them." 

Every  day  it  was  a  frightful  torment  for 
him  to  wake  up. 

He  would  awake  in  the  happy  conscious- 
ness of  being  young  and  fresh,  light-hearted, 
free  from  hate,  living  a  soft,  pleasant,  com- 
fortable life.  .  .  .  And  then  suddenly  he 
would  feel  that  there  was  something  in  life 
that  he  had  forgotten,  that  would  come  back 
to  him  again,  that  poisoned  all  the  rest.  .  .  . 
Ah,  yes!  I  am  in  prison!  .  .  .  And  the  si- 
lence of  the  morning,  the  warm  comfort  of 
his  bed,  his  solitude,  gave  him  a  feeling  that 
it  was  absolute,  that  this  thing  would  never 
change. 

Then  he  would  go  out  and  restore  his  sense 
of  proportion  in  the  company  of  men.  .  .  . 
He  no  longer  had  the  spasms  of  sorrow  that 
had  crazed  him  on  the  first  coming  of  the 
idea  of  his  bondage.  Now  his  sorrow  was 
dull  and  monotonous,  a  thing  that  seemed 


32  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

essentially  enduring,  like  wretched  surround- 
ings, horribly,  horribly  bearable. 

That  day  she  came  to  him  and  lay  in  his 
arms,  worn  out,  with  eyes  closed.  .  .  .  Hag- 
gardly he  looked  at  her,  terrified  by  the  hap- 
piness she  found  in  him. 

Sometimes  he  tried  to  accept  his  bondage. 
.  .  .  He  would  sacrifice  himself!  What  did 
his  life  matter?  .  .  .  He  used  to  go  to  church 
and  try  to  learn  the  art  of  self-immolation. 
.  .  .  He  mistook  his  liking  for  the  peace,  the 
austere  resonance,  the  great  placid  arches, 
for  a  disposition  for  self-sacrifice. 

Often  he  accused  himself  of  exaggeration, 
of  romanticism,  in  his  belief  that  he  was 
"  buried  "  and  "  in  prison."  Could  he  not 
escape,  in  work  or  through  pleasure?  .  .  . 
Then  he  would  have  a  feeling  of  retrogres- 
sion. For  he  had  dreamed  of  the  singularity 
of  love.  .  .  .  Then  he  would  summon  up  his 
old  ideal,  and,  with  bowed  head,  he  would 


ASCENT  S3 

acknowledge  the  necessity  of  desolemnising 
love. 

Sometimes  he  would  really  escape  from 
his  unhappiness  by  judging  it.  He  would 
think  of  his  first  tenderness  with  her,  his  first 
tears,  the  slow  weaving  of  the  net  that  bound 
him.  And  he  would  think:  "  None  of  it  was 
true.  I  did  not  love  the  bond.  I  did 
not  love  my  tears.  I  was  following  old 
models." 

And  he  would  dream: 

"  Any  young  man  who  is  sensitive  to  all 
the  examples  of  love  would  do  as  I  did. 
He  would  bind  fetters  on  himself  and  he 
would  weep.  The  aesthetic  of  love  is  al- 
ways the  aesthetic  of  tears  and  bondage. 
...  So  much  the  worse  for  those  who  are 
not  fit  for  it.  They  act  on  it  just  the  same. 
.  .  .  For  there  is  no  other  way.  Love  that 
is  free  and  joyous  is  still  unpopular  and  de- 
spised. .  .  .  And  perhaps  it  is  better  so.  ... 
The  aesthetic  of  love  was  made  for  women. 
They  have  made  it  for  themselves.  .  .  ." 


34  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

And  suddenly  he  would  think  that  the  de- 
light of  tears  and  bondage  existed  apart  from 
all  that,  and  that  he  had  known  it,  that  he  was 
still  enslaved  by  it. 

Then  he  tried  to  discover  why  he  no  longer 
loved  her.  .  .  .  Since  when?  .  .  .  He  probed 
back  and  back.  .  .  . 

He  was  overcome  by  a  sort  of  dull  dizzi- 
ness: it  seemed  to  him  then  that  he  had  never 
loved  her.  .  .  . 

And  every  day  brought  fresh  uneasiness. 
.  .  .  He  was  bored  by  the  little  people  whom 
she  made  him  meet:  they  hurt  him  now  and 
gave  him  a  feeling  that  he  was  unclassed. 
.  .  .  He  was  disquieted  by  Madeleine's  truth- 
fulness, her  honesty  in  not  appearing  to  be 
anything  but  what  she  was,  her  lack  of  the 
kind  of  polite  bluff  to  which  he  had  always 
been  accustomed.  .  .  . 

And  again  he  was  irritated  by  the  frugality 
of  Madeleine's  life,  the  frugality  of  her  house, 


ASCENT  35 

her  furniture,  her  establishment,  her  clothes. 
.  .  .  And  yet  he  knew  many  others  like  hers, 
people  living  frugal  lives  —  and  they  amused 
him  —  artists  and  working  people.  .  .  .  But 
in  their  houses  there  were  gaiety,  carelessness, 
liberty.  .  .  .  While  in  hers  there  were  sad- 
ness, worry,  slavery  .  .  .  and  her  need  of 
clinging  to  some  one  happier  than  herself. 
.  .  .  But  for  the  moment  he  did  not  analyse 
it  all.  He  only  saw  that  he  was  drifting 
away  from  the  woman  because  of  her  humble 
life,  and,  as  he  tried  to  fight  down  his  growing 
consciousness  of  the  truth,  so  horrible  in  its 
simplicity,  mad  with  grief  and  shame,  he 
cried:  "I  am  not  going  to  leave  her  because 
she  is  not  rich!  " 


However  he  was  forcing  his  way  back  to 
freedom.  Silently,  laboriously,  the  secret 
process  of  destruction  of  all  that  bound  him 
to  her  set  in.  He  returned  to  society,  the 
theatres,  his  friends,  his  books.  .  .  . 


36  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

He  told  her  that  he  had  been  to  the  theatre 
and  said  that  he  had  been  taken.  She  forced 
herself  to  take  it  lightly. 

She  found  him  changed  but  could  not  say 
exactly  how.  She  thought  she  was  attaching 
too  much  importance  to  "  impressions." 

Alone  with  her,  at  her  house,  he  would  talk 
to  her  now  about  the  plays  he  had  seen,  and 
about  the  people  he  knew  and  their  gossip: 
he  would  talk  about  Pierre  and  children's 
minds:  he  would  talk  about  music,  poetry, 
colour,  dress,  and  decoration.  .  .  . 

She  forced  herself  to  think  that  his  ceasing 
to  talk  of  love  meant  nothing. 

When  he  was  alone  with  her  in  their  flat 
he  no  longer  desired  darkness  and  silence.  .  .  . 
Rather  he  wanted  daylight,  the  noise  coming 
up  from  the  street,  as  faint  gusts  of  liberty. 
.  .  .  Now  he  wished  their  union  to  be  an  act 
and  not  a  condition.  .  .  .  And  at  once  he 
would  begin  to  talk  of  outside  things  as 


ASCENT  37 

though  he  wished  at  once  to  put  their  in- 
timacy behind  him.  She  was  dying  under 
it  all,  slowly.  .  .  .  She  tried  to  think  that  she 
was  attaching  too  much  importance  to  "  little 
things." 

Often,  when  she  came,  she  would  find  him 
reading.  He  would  draw  her  to  him,  and 
made  her  read  too,  and  talk,  or  play  the  piano. 
...  So  the  day  would  pass.  .  .  .  And  he 
would  take  her  home.  .  .  . 

She  tried  to  remember  what  she  had  been 
told,  that  the  union  of  the  body  was  a  little 
thing.  And  their  souls  had  met! 

She  would  remind  him  of  little  ways  he 
had  had  and  had  no  longer:  his  pleasure  in 
furnishing  and  in  her  clothes.  .  .  .  He  would 
reply:  "What  would  you?  One  can't  go  on 
being  eighteen  for  ever.  .  .  ."  She  felt  that 
all  was  lost. 

One  day  she  asked  him: 


38  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

"You  still  love  me  just  the  same?"  He 
took  her  in  his  arms  and  covered  her  with 
kisses.  .  .  . 

In  her  heart  she  remembered  that  he  had 
not  been  at  all  surprised  that  she  should  ask 
him  that. 

.  .  .  They  would  lie  side  by  side,  sinking 
with  the  dying  day,  each  absorbed  in  thought, 
so  sundered  soul  from  soul  as  to  make  the 
intimacy  of  their  bodies  a  mockery  cruel  and 
hard  to  bear.  .  .  . 

One  day  in  the  country  they  were  sitting 
on  a  little  stone  bridge  at  the  end  of  a  day 
which  she  had  wanted  to  be  happy  though  it 
had  never  been  one  of  friendliness.  Night 
was  falling.  He  said: 

'  We  must  go  home.  ...  I  am  dining  with 
my  sister-in-law.  .  .  .  You  know,  she  is  giv- 
ing a  series  of  them." 

"Ah!"  she  said,  "You  are  going  to  all 
of  them?" 

They  said  no  more.    During  the  past  year 


ASCENT  39 

he  had  not  been  to  any.    And  he  knew  that 
she  was  thinking  of  that. 

They  went  home  slowly,  silently,  horribly 
in  accord,  bound  together,  as  though  they 
were  carrying  between  them  the  coffin  of  their 
child. 


He  had  no  doubt  now:  she  knew. 

Then  there  began  for  him  the  worst  tor- 
ment of  all.  His  heart,  marvellously  pre- 
pared by  two  years  of  tenderness  for  any  out- 
pouring, any  disordered  emotion,  became  a 
prey  to  the  sharpest,  the  completest,  the  most 
passionate  pity.  He  wandered  through  the 
streets  the  whole  day  long  now,  immured  in 
the  fixed  idea  of  Madeleine  in  distress  and 
striving  to  overcome  her  misery  by  the  most 
frantic  self-abasement. 

He  saw  her  sitting  with  her  family,  forced 
to  control  herself,  to  say  something,  anything, 
to  keep  back  her  tears,  while  he  himself  was 


40  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

able  to  find  solace  for  his  grief  in  movement, 
in  the  open  air,  in  the  free  flow  of  his  tears. 
.  .  .  Ah!  the  eternal  inequality  in  the  divi- 
sion of  suffering,  the  eternal  excess  of  misery 
that  awaits  the  woman,  with  her  more  tender 
soul,  the  less  adequate  equipment  of  her  mind, 
which  is  for  ever  turned  in  upon  herself:  her 
more  barbarous  desire:  her  more  sensitive 
body:  her  solitude,  her  religious  heart,  her 
immobility,  her  duties,  her  duties,  always  her 
duties.  .  .  .  Did  any  man  ever  feel  all  this 
more  acutely  than  he!  What  a  contempt 
he  felt  for  the  sufferings  of  men  with  their 
inherited  hardness,  their  multiple  interests, 
their  liberty.  .  .  .  He  had  a  sort  of  feeling 
of  shame  at  being  a  man. 

Women  passed  him,  working  women, 
slowly  going  home  to  their  gloomy  homes  at 
the  end  of  a  joyless  day  like  all  their  days. 
.  .  .  But,  at  least,  in  their  poor  rooms,  they 
will  be  by  themselves,  they  will  be  able  to 
weep.  .  .  .  All  women  seemed  to  him  to  be 
happier  than  Madeleine.  .  .  .  Besides,  these 
women  had  not  her  sensibility,  her  education. 


ASCENT  4,1 

.  .  .  Madeleine  seemed  to  him  to  be  the  sym- 
bol of  unhappiness,  sheer  unhappiness,  the 
only  unhappiness  in  the  world.  ...  It  seemed 
to  him  that  for  two  thousand  years  nature 
and  the  ways  of  men  had  been  working 
together  with  no  other  end  than  to  as- 
sure the  unhappiness  of  that  one  wretched 
woman. 

He  saw  her  sitting  with  her  family,  forced 
to  control  herself,  to  say  something,  anything, 
to  keep  back  her  tears.  .  .  .  And  in  the  writ- 
ings of  authors  of  alleged  "  profundity "  he 
had  read  that  a  forced  abstention  from  the 
physical  expression  of  grief  keeps  back  grief. 
And  current  morality  also  assured  him  that 
"  they  were  made  to  suffer,"  that  "  they  were 
used  to  it,"  that  "  all  is  well  and  for  the  best." 
.  .  .  How  he  girded  at  such  base  methods  of 
avoiding  the  need  to  pity.  How  he  detested 
those  who  urged  such  methods  upon  him. 
How  he  crushed  them  with  the  saying  of 
the  master:  "  The  truth  is  that  it  is  impossible 
to  pity  a  woman  enough."1 

1  Nietzsche. 


42  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

And  he  saw  Madeleine  growing  thinner 
and  paler,  with  her  poor,  sunken,  pinched, 
drawn  face.  And  all  these  mental  images 
which  would  have  repelled  a  strong  heart, 
jealous  of  its  strength,  bound  him  by  his 
horrible  need  of  growing  weaker.  He  melted 
at  the  sight  of  her  tears.  And  the  mere  sight 
of  Madeleine — apart  altogether  from  her 
grief — with  her  childlike  eyes,  her  sweet  face, 
her  gentle  ways,  made  him  sink  and  yield: 
her  poor  yearning  heart  could  not  even  bear 
suffering  without  giving  forth  the  idea  of 
gentleness  and  ingenuousness. 

And  to  think  how  young  the  poor  creature 
was!  .  .  .  Ah!  Indeed  he  pitied  the  martyr- 
dom of  a  poor  creature,  left  to  fade  away, 
sewn  up  alive  in  the  shroud  of  her  last  ecstasy. 
.  .  .  But  at  least  she  is  old  and  suffering 
becomes  her.  .  .  .  But  the  suffering  of  a 
young  woman,  a  woman  keyed  up  to  the  de- 
light of  living,  a  creature  in  the  bud,  of 
whom  men  say  that  she  is  meant  to  grow 
and  to  expand,  is  revolting,  horrible,  inju- 
rious. 


ASCENT  43 

And  to  think  of  her  gentleness,  her  tact 
in  her  suffering!  ...  If  only  she  had  re- 
proached him,  made  demands  on  him,  threat- 
ened him.  .  .  .  That  would  have  given  him 
the  strength  deliberately  to  hurt  her  and 
make  an  end.  .  .  .  But  no,  there  she  was, 
looking  at  him  with  the  eyes  of  an  affection- 
ate dog,  holding  out  her  throat  for  him  to 
cut.  .  .  .  He  hated  her  for  not  defending 
herself. 

And  he  would  think  of  her  in  the  evening, 
after  dinner,  alone  in  her  little  room  with 
her  son,  holding  back  her  tears  in  his  pres- 
ence. .  .  .  And  the  boy  looking  at  her,  sur- 
prised that  she  too  could  know  suffering  as 
he  did,  and  respecting  her  less  for  it.  ... 
Oh!  the  infamy  of  forcing  tears  upon  those 
who  should  remain  great.  .  .  .  Shame,  shame, 
he  cried,  upon  those  who  have  humiliated 
the  mothers!  .  .  . 

And  he  would  see  her  at  night,  sitting  up 
in  her  bed,  thinking,  thinking.  .  .  .  Ah!  it  is 
an  unique  kind  of  misery  that  of  the  woman 
who  feels  that  she  is  loved  less,  the  imprisoned 


44  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

creature  wondering:  "Where  is  he?  What 
is  he  doing?  What  is  he  thinking?  What 
will  he  be  like  to-morrow? "  Knowing  her 
own  impotence  and  thinking:  "  What  can  I 
do  if  he  wants  to  leave  me!" — the  woman's 
nightmare,  her  lover's  liberty. — And  then 
the  night,  in  its  solemnity  telling  her  how 
from  all  time  eternally  women  have  clung  to 
the  same  dream  as  herself,  and  how  eternally 
they  have  come  to  shipwreck;  and  then  the 
dawning  day  bringing  with  it  the  ideal  of  the 
dull,  eternally  dull,  life,  lit  up  by  no  single 
ray  of  love.  .  .  .  How  truly  and  exactly  he 
felt  all  that!  That  and  so  many  other  pecu- 
liarly feminine  sorrows:  the  utter  devastation 
of  the  ruin  of  love:  the  nausea  of  the  return 
to  reason,  independence,  an  undivided  heart: 
and  the  image  of  the  lover,  appearing  charm- 
ing, unique,  irreplaceable,  as  he  fades  away 
into  the  distance:  and  the  doom  of  living 
in  the  places  where  everything  tells  of 
him,  with  people  who  will  speak  his  name, 
.  .  .  how  precisely  he  was  conscious  of  all 
that! 


ASCENT  45 

And  he  would  walk  on  breathlessly.  Crazed 
with  pity,  not  thinking  only  of  the  woman, 
not  feeling  only  through  her,  but  putting 
himself  in  her  place,  in  a  condition  of  real 
altruism,  in  the  submission,  the  submissiveness 
of  the  ego.  A  condition  of  sentimental 
alienation.  .  .  .  And  he  thought  of  those 
who  have  made  fun  of  these  things :  "  People 
always  have  strength  enough  to  bear  the  ills 
of  others."  Idiot!  As  if  pity  did  not  con- 
sist precisely  in  the  ills  of  others  becoming 
our  own.  And  he  thought  of  the  "  psycho- 
logue  " — the  dramaturgist  of  "  love  " — who 
stops  and  paints  the  sufferings  of  a  man  who 
is  too  much  loved,  a  fatuous  fool!  who  had 
seen  only  irritation  and  not  pity.  .  .  .  Some- 
times he  would  sit  down  with  his  hands  on  his 
heart  as  though  he  were  trying  to  check  its 
disaffection.  And  he  would  sigh:  "  Shall  I 
never  get  away  from  my  pity  for  her?  Shall 
I  never  return  to  consciousness  of  myself,  of 
myself  alone,  utterly  alone?  Will  it  always 
be  contaminated  with  the  consciousness  of 
another? "  And  he  would  think  of  those  who 


46  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

have  preached  the  gospel  of  pity.  .  .  .  Fools! 
Fools!    They  have  never  felt  it! 

Sometimes  he  would  escape.  He  would 
think :  "  She  is  young.  She  will  repair  her 
life.  She  will  have  other  lovers.  .  .  ."  And 
suddenly  he  would  feel  something  pierce  his 
heart:  "  They  will  make  her  suffer." 

And  he  would  rend  himself  with  the  thought 
of  the  woman's  sorrows — as  a  man  rends  him- 
self with  the  thought  of  a  child's  troubles — 
making  himself  responsible  for  all  her  suffer- 
ing. He  would  scourge  himself  with  the  re- 
flection that  she  had  no  connections,  no  for- 
tune, no  amusement.  .  .  .  As  if  he  were  to 
blame  for  that.  .  .  .  He  pitied  her  far  more 
than  her  suffering  under  these  disadvantages 
called  for,  attributing  to  her  his  own  needs 
and  forgetting  that  she  had  been  brought  up 
like  that. 

At  times  he  would  think  of  making  a  work 
of  art  of  their  adventure.  And  suddenly  he 


ASCENT  47 

would  think:  "Yes,  that's  it.  I  will  escape 
into  fiction  and  succeed  and  be  a  great 
man.  .  .  ."  And  he  saw  the  Beatrices,  the 
Lauras,  the  Elviras  abandoned  and  growing 
old  while  their  poets  were  celebrated  by  the 
world.  And  he  would  detest  all  poets. 

And  his  unease  grew.  He  sank  deeper 
and  deeper  into  pity  for  women.  He  based 
his  pity  on  the  misfortunes  of  the  whole  sex, 
the  passage  from  childhood  to  virginity,  from 
virginity  to  womanhood.  .  .  .  On  their  en- 
slaved condition,  slaves  whom  men  feed  and 
clothe.  .  .  .  He  pitied  even  their  beauty, 
their  victimisation,  their  living  under  the 
necessity  of  giving  pleasure.  .  .  .  Naturally 
he  refused  to  see  their  compensations,  their 
power,  their  triumphs,  their  insolence.  He 
detested  the  men  who  saw  these  things.  .  .  . 
What  a  contempt  he  had  for  all  those  who 
made  fun  of  women! 

And  everywhere  he  found  food  for  his 
malady.  .  .  .  The  sight  of  women  in  the 
street  old  before  their  time,  coarsened  in  spite 


48  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

of  themselves;  in  gardens,  of  young  resigned 
mothers  dragging  their  children  in  their  train ; 
or,  in  music-halls,  of  so-called  smart  women, 
blazoning  their  husbands,  slaves  in  silk  and 
pearl  necklaces.  Everywhere  he  found  the 
slaves'  prison  of  women.  In  flashes  he  would 
think:  "And  their  ferocity?  And  their  de- 
light in  torturing  men? "  His  heart  would 
leap  on  that:  "  So  much  the  better  if  they 
avenge  themselves!" 

Sometimes  in  a  train  he  would  see  a  com- 
fortable, large,  red-faced  woman  whose  hus- 
band would  call  her :  "  Mummy."  And  he 
would  think:  "  That  is  a  happy  woman.  .  .  . 
That  is  their  lot:  either  brutalisation  or  mis- 
ery in  soul." 

And  it  would  seem  to  him  that  no  one 
had  any  pity  for  women.  And  it  would 
seem  to  him  that  no  one  had  any  pity  for 
any  one.  How  amusing  of  people  to  pro- 
scribe pity!  As  if  there  were  any  to  pro- 
scribe! As  if  all  the  unhappy  people  were 
not  the  enemies  of  the  rest!  As  if  any- 
body could  bear  for  long  the  use  that  they 


ASCENT  49 

make  of  one — "  Stay  a  little.  You  are  in 
no  great  hurry"— in  the  hope  of  escaping 
their  misery!  .  .  .  Ah!  But  we  are  too  clever 
for  them !—  '  You  must  be  reasonable.  Come, 
come.  Everything  turns  in  time." — And  we 
push  them  back  into  the  morass. 

One  evening  he  went  out  walking,  torn  by 
the  memory  of  the  day,  torn  by  the  memory 
of  the  slow  cruelty  he  had  inflicted  on  her 
with  his  ill-feigned  joys,  his  clumsily  con- 
cealed evasions,  his  cunningly  awkward  lies. 
.  .  .  And  now,  in  her  bed,  she  would  be  think- 
ing of  it  all.  .  .  .  And  he  walked  on,  tor- 
mented by  the  thought  of  her.  He  went 
along  by  the  river :  far  from  the  sight  of  rela- 
tive, indulgent  men:  he  was  drunk  with  con- 
fession, drunk  with  preening  himself  in  his 
absolute  shame,  drunk  with  a  blight  that  only 
nature  or  the  dead  can  give.  .  .  .  He  thought 
of  Madeleine's  father  who  had  so  loved  her. 
And  it  seemed  to  him  that  her  father  would 
call  him  to  account  for  the  fate  of  the  child 
whom  only  they  two  had  loved.  .  .  .  And 


50  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

suddenly  he  called  up  the  image  of  Made- 
leine as  a  little  girl,  Madeleine  sleeping  in 
her  little  brass  bed,  as  she  had  described  it 
to  him,  with  her  hands  clasped  under  her 
cheek,  and  her  lips  parted,  in  the  twilight. 
.  .  .  And  it  seemed  to  him  that,  if  there  were 
any  justice  in  the  world,  it  should  demand 
that  life  should  bring  only  gentleness  and 
tenderness  to  the  adorable  sleeping  child. 
And  life  had  brought  only  bitterness  and 
harshness,  giving  a  wryness  to  the  expression 
of  her  lips,  as  though  she  were  suffering  un- 
der some  dreadful  dream  that  she  did  not 
understand.  .  .  .  And  now  that  fate  had 
justly  granted  her — dear,  beloved  creature — 
a  little  love,  and  a  little  happiness,  it  was 
only  to  lay  her  low!  .  .  .  Then  he  could  con- 
tain himself  no  longer,  and  with  all  his  soul 
yearning  towards  her  innocence  and  fragility, 
he  ran  on  through  the  night,  crying  through 
his  sobs :  "  Never,  never,  will  I  do  anything  to 
injure  her.  .  .  ." 

And,  clinging  to  his  desire  to  love,  fortified 


ASCENT  51 

by  his  tears,  he  cried  again  in  fierce  self- 
castigation:  "I  love  her  still!  .  .  .  Surely  a 
man  must  love  a  woman  if  he  can  weep  for 
her  like  that.  .  .  ." 

The  unhappy  wretch  was  wearing  himself 
out  with  trying  to  pretend  that  his  crazy  pity 
was  love. 

* 
*       * 

Meanwhile  together  with  his  pity,  and  be- 
cause of  it,  his  feeling  of  being  bound  and 
his  longing  for  freedom  only  increased.  He 
had  terrible  gusts  of  independence.  Made- 
leine suffered  them,  though  they  prostrated 
her.  He  was  surfeited  with  pity  for  her  and 
detested  her  for  it.  ...  He  was  most  hor- 
ribly torn  between  the  worst  kind  of  egoism 
and  the  craziest  tenderness. 

In  her  tactless  confidence  she  went  on  tell- 
ing him  everything  more  precisely  than  ever. 
She  told  him  of  her  household  troubles,  of 
her  strained  relations  with  her  husband  and 
his  family,  of  her  disappointments  in  her 
boy,  Pierre.  ...  In  his  heart  he  revolted. 


UBP.ARY 

IMUVPPCrrv  ne  at  i 


52  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

Why  could  she  not  keep  all  these  things  to 
herself?  In  truth  she  found  much  pleasure 
in  touching  him  to  pity.  .  .  .  He  had  not 
been  born  into  the  world  for  that.  .  .  .  All 
because  she  "loved"  him!  A  woman's  in- 
vention, that  conception  of  love  with  its  con- 
fusion between  love  and  the  solace  that  comes 
from  telling  all  that  stultifies  it.  ...  He 
would  answer  her  curtly.  When  she  left 
him  she  would  weep  over  it.  He  knew  that. 
.  .  .  And  he  wept  at  the  thought  of  her 
tears. 

Often  he  would  feel  a  genuine  anger  at 
the  marks  of  suffering  which  were  beginning 
to  appear  in  her.  "  As  if  it  were  not  sad 
enough  that  I  do  not  love  her  any  more, 
without  her  forcing  me  to  see  how  she  is 
wasting  away  and  how  hard  lines  are  settling 
about  her  lips!  .  .  ." 

One  day  she  told  him  about  her  first  con- 
finement, the  stillborn  child,  which  had  had 
to  be  cut  in  pieces  before  they  could  bring  it 


ASCENT  63 

forth,  while  they  had  been  unable  to  make 
any  anaesthetic  take  effect.  .  .  .  She  told  him 
the  story  quite  simply,  as  though  it  were  the 
most  ordinary  matter  in  the  world.  He 
listened  stupidly.  He  thought  of  the  ac- 
cumulation of  suffering  that  women  bear,  and 
how  the  idea  of  tribulation  never  repelled 
them.  .  .  .  He  seemed  to  himself  to  be  rather 
foolish  to  have  so  much  consideration  for  her. 

He  watched  her  perishing  for  lack  of  love, 
and  springing  to  life  again  at  a  caress;  she 
was  made  for  feeling,  only  for  feeling,  for 
nothing  but  feeling.  ...  It  seemed  to  him 
that  in  refusing  to  allow  her  to  suffer  he  was 
committing  the  supreme  offence — the  offence 
contemned  by  the  poet,  of  having  pity  on 
those  whom  God  has  doomed.1 

And  still  she  was  as  attentive  to  him  as  in 
their  early  days,  brought  him  trifles  that  he  had 
desired,  flowers  that  he  loved.  .  .  .  He  was 
incensed  against  her  for  forcing  a  tender 
welcome  upon  him,  accused  her  of  doing  it 

1  Dante,  Inferno,  xz.  SO. 


54  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

deliberately,  of  knowing  that  she  was  forc- 
ing it  upon  him. 

And  now  he  was  careful  to  avoid  noticing 
a  number  of  small  desires  that  she  expressed, 
to  keep  her  waiting,  not  always  to  be  free  on 
the  days  she  appointed.  .  .  .  With  horrible 
skill  and  cunning  he  gradually  accustomed 
her  to  the  idea  of  being  loved  less. 

When  they  left  their  flat,  if  it  were  already 
dark,  he  would  take  her  home.  They  would 
stop  the  carriage  some  distance  away  from 
her  house.  ...  In  the  old  days  she  used  to 
leave  him  at  once  and  take  her  happiness  in 
his  caresses  back  with  her  into  her  prison. 
Now  she  hesitated  before  returning  to  the 
house  the  emptiness  of  which,  lying  in  wait  for 
her,  was  now  augmented  by  her  thoughts. 
She  would  linger  with  her  hand  in  his.  .  .  . 
And  he  would  feel  her  then,  in  the  dark,  si- 
lent and  restive,  with  the  tragic  restiveness  of 
a  woman  in  the  face  of  her  inward  thoughts, 
like  a  dog  on  the  way  to  its  cart,  or  a  lamb 
nearing  the  slaughter-house:  he  would  feel 


ASCENT  55 

her  clinging  to  him,  fully  conscious  that  she 
was  disturbing  him,  obsessing  him,  that  he 
would  soon  throw  her  aside,  that  she  would 
suffer  more  the  more  she  clung,  and  still 
clinging.  .  .  .  Meanwhile  he  would  think: 
"  In  five  minutes  I  shall  be  free,  I  shall  read 
the  papers.  ...  I  can  hold  out  till  then.  .  .  ." 
And  she  would  guess  his  calculated  patience: 
she  would  be  conscious  of  the  relief  he  would 
feel  a  moment  later.  She  would  try  to  de- 
lay. .  .  .  But  the  moment  would  come  and 
she  would  sigh:  "Well,  I  must  go  in."  .  .  . 
And  all  night  he  would  be  haunted  by  the 
thought  of  her  going  back  to  her  melancholy 
house,  turning  back  towards  him,  and  him- 
self smiling  at  her  with  a  forced  smile 
through  the  window  of  the  carriage  as  it  bore 
him  away.  .  .  . 


And  now  she  began  to  struggle. 

As  she  began  to  feel  her  lover's  love  slip- 
ping away  from  her  she  strove  desperately  to 


56  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

give  it  the  air  of  an  established  thing,  either 
in  the  hope  of  making  herself  believe  it  by 
so  doing,  or  because  she  was  trying  to  en- 
slave the  man  by  the  faith  she  showed  in 
him.  ..."  You  are  rude  to  me,"  she  would 
write,  "  and  yet  you  love  me."  "  Why  do 
you  hurt  me  so,  when  you  love  me  ? "  '  You 
love  me  more  than  you  say,  more  perhaps 
than  you  think,"  etc.  ...  In  his  heart  he 
rebelled.  What  I  All  that  because  he  was 
absently  gentle  with  her,  absent  in  his  ca- 
resses, because  he  replied  "  Yes "  when  she 
said,  "Do  you  love  me? "  As  if  there  were 
any  choice  in  the  matter!  As  if  the  tone  were 
not  everything!  .  .  .  No!  She  would  never 
understand.  .  .  .  She  would  force  him  to 
say:  "  I  don't  love  you  any  longer."  And  she 
knew  perfectly  well  that  he  no  longer  loved 
her!  .  .  .  But  she  kept  on  saying  to  herself: 
"As  long  as  he  does  not  speak  I  will  ignore 
it:  I  will  keep  him.  .  .  ."  Then  he  would 
respond  with  a  similar  exploitation  of  mascu- 
line dues,  a  similar  lack  of  honesty.  .  .  . 
Then,  suddenly,  he  would  see  only  one  thing, 


ASCENT  57 

one  single  fixed  idea:  the  vast  extent  of  their 
distress  that  it  could  bring  them  to  such  hu- 
miliation, to  acceptance  of  such  humiliation. 
.  .  .  And  once  more  he  would  sink  back  into 
his  crazy  sympathy. 

She  would  write: 

"  Darling,  your  love  is  changing.  You 
feel  it:  and  you  are  suffering.  You  dare  not 
tell  me,  dare  not  confess  it  to  yourself.  .  .  . 
Why  dare  you  not?  .  .  .  Well,  you  will  love 
me  differently,  tenderly,  etc.  .  .  ."  He 
crumpled  the  letter  up.  As  if  love  could 
"change"!  As  if  its  only  change  were  not 
in  death!  As  if  she  did  not  know  that!  .  .  . 
Then,  suddenly,  he  would  feel  how  wretched 
she  must  be  to  come  and  beg  for  the  ashes  of 
love,  knowing  them  to  be  ashes.  .  .  .  And 
once  more  he  would  sink  back  into  his  crazy 
sympathy. 

And  again: 

"  I  am  mad  with  impatience.  .  .  .  And  I 
shan't  see  you  until  to-morrow!  .  .  .  Yester- 
day, when  you  left  me,  your  expression  was 


58  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

ominous:  your  voice,  your  eyes,  everything 
condemned  me.  ...  I  cried  all  night.  .  .  . 
I  wrote  you  a  letter,  but  burned  it.  You 
would  have  thought  me  mad.  ...  I  fancied 
that  you  wanted  to  leave  me  and  go  away. 
.  .  .  Ah!  It  was  mad  of  me,  wasn't  it?  I 
know  that  you  love  me.  .  .  .  But  the  idea 
was  too  frightful!  ...  I  have  nothing  but 
you  in  the  world,  etc.  .  .  ." — That  made  him 
long  to  break,  and  make  an  end.  His  sense 
of  justice  protested:  No,  you  have  no  right 
to  inflict  such  a  responsibility  on  another 
human  being,  to  let  your  whole  life  depend 
on  her  frown.  .  .  .  And  yet  he  had  never  so 
rawly  felt  the  impossibility  of  leaving  her: 
he  thought  of  her  as  a  drowning  woman 
clinging  to  a  boat;  should  he  take  an  axe  and 
hack  off  her  hands? 

She  felt  that  she  was  obsessing  him  with 
her  love.  And  she  tried  hard  to  talk  to  him 
about  other  things,  the  day's  doings,  the 
passers-by.  .  .  .  But  it  was  embarrassing  and 
tedious  for  him.  She  only  knew  how  to  love: 


ASCENT  59 

she  had  no  ideas,  no  mind.  .  .  .  And  then 
she  was  forcing  her  voice,  her  figure,  the  ex- 
pression in  her  eyes,  her  joy  in  being  with 
him,  her  clinging  to  him,  and  always,  always, 
her  love,  upon  his  attention.  .  .  .  He  became 
unjust,  brutal,  and  hated  her  for  making  him 
so,  and  became  more  so.  ...  And  at  night, 
when  she  was  gone,  he  would  call  up  her  poor 
miserable  face  and  he  would  have  given  years 
of  his  life  to  be  able  to  drink  her  tears  and 
see  her  smile  once  more. 

Sometimes  she  would  come  and  sit  in  a  cor- 
ner with  a  book,  or  a  piece  of  sewing,  and 
wish  him  to  go  on  with  what  he  was  doing 
without  bothering  about  her.  .  .  .  He  would 
write,  or,  even,  work!  .  .  .  And  out  of  the 
corner  of  his  eye  he  would  see  her  fixing  him 
with  a  long  worshipping  look.  .  .  .  And  he 
would  think  peevishly: "  Just  another  woman's 
trick  not  to  let  a  man  go,  to  deify  him !  "  And 
he  would  hate  her  for  making  him  ridiculous. 


She  loved  his  delicate  hands  and  his  long 
5 


60  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

eyelashes.  It  exasperated  him  to  be  forced 
to  play  the  cherubin  for  her.  ...  As  if  men 
needed  to  be  loved! 

At  last  he  came  to  detest  woman  with  her 
childish  mind,  her  childish  desires,  her  childish 
eyes,  her  childish  features,  and  her  way  of 
dragging  a  man  into  her  childish  tricks,  and 
forcing  him  to  see  the  greatest  things  in  a 
sensual,  tender,  pretty  aspect;  her  brutali- 
sation  of  man  in  base  intercourse,  in  exclu- 
sive preoccupation  with  the  things  next  to 
hand,  things  immediate,  things  directly  felt. 
.  .  .  He  reached  such  a  point  that  when  he 
was  with  her  in  her  house  he  used  to  long  for 
her  husband's  presence.  A  dogmatic,  pon- 
derous, tiresome  man!  But  that  did  not  mat- 
ter: he  was  at  any  rate  a  man,  a  being  pos- 
sessed of  a  few  general  ideas. 

And  he  detested  women  for  the  lewdness  of 
their  hearts,  always  ready  to  give,  to  devote 
themselves,  without  reserve.  .  .  .  And  people 
admire  them  for  it!  As  if  they  had  anything 


ASCENT  61 

else  to  do  but  to  give  themselves  to  others, 
being,  as  they  are,  nothing  by  themselves !  As 
if  it  were  not  a  form  of  egoism  in  them!  .  .  . 
And  he  detested  their  horrible  power — which 
is  also  admired — of  losing  sight  of  reason  for 
a  moment's  joy!  .  .  .  And  the  dreadful  at- 
mosphere of  demoralisation  which  they  cast 
about  love,  the  terrible  savour  of  death  that 
they  can  instil  into  a  kiss!  And  their  easy 
delight  in  it!  How  thoroughly  he  now  ap- 
proved of  the  men  whom  women  call  brutes, 
the  men  who  send  them  packing  with  their 
"  poetry,"  take,  enjoy  them  and  pass  on. 

And  he  was  overcome  by  horror,  horror 
of  the  woman,  horror  of  her  tenderness,  hor- 
ror of  her  presence.  Now  when  she  came  to 
him  he  would  suddenly  have  a  violent  palpita- 
tion in  his  heart,  which  he  took  for  a  spasm 
of  pity,  though  it  was  fear:  recognition  of 
the  presence  of  the  enemy.  ...  In  their  flat 
he  could  still  bear  her:  his  horror  of  her  was 
blurred  into  the  desire  to  take  .  .  . ;  he  would 
forget  his  hatred  in  his  joy  in  her.  .  .  .  But 


62  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

elsewhere  ...  in  her  house,  in  their  friends' 
houses,  he  suffered  agonies  of  terror  lest 
they  should  be  left  alone!  When  they  were 
left  together  he  would  avoid  her  eyes:  he 
would  carefully  construct  his  sentences  to  avoid 
having  to  say  "  tu  ";  he  would  carefully  dis- 
guise any  expression  that  might  lead  back  to 
love.  Meanwhile  he  would  see  her  leaning 
back  in  her  chair,  with  her  eyes  fixed  on  him, 
patient  and  determined.  .  .  . 

Then,  in  the  evening,  he  would  walk  on 
and  on.  .  .  .  He  would  find  some  means  of 
defending  himself.  .  .  .  He  would  not  endure 
it.  ...  Other  men  did  not  endure  it.  ... 
There  was  no  reason  why  he  should  act  dif- 
ferently from  other  men.  .  .  .  Yes,  but  other 
men  do  not  understand  1  .  .  .  And  he  did 
understand!  .  .  .  His  intelligence  imposed 
certain  duties  on  him.  .  .  .  But  what  duties? 
To  allow  himself  to  be  swallowed  up  by  the 
unhappy?  No.  What,  then?  To  fling  them 
back  into  the  water  and  go  his  way?  That 
was  just  literary  nonsense!  As  if  it  were 


ASCENT  63 

possible.  .  .  .  But  provision  has  been  made 
for  everything.  There  exist  people  especially 
for  them:  priests,  doctors,  natural  consolers. 
.  .  .  Yes,  ready-made  pity!  They  don't  want 
it!  They  want  pity  cut  to  measure.  Pity 
made  expressly  for  them.  .  .  .  They  want 
some  one  to  devour!  .  .  .  But  I  am  mad!  I 
am  dramatising  the  whole  thing!  She  is  not 
asking  so  much  as  that!  She  is  asking  for  no 
great  thing.  ...  I  can  easily  give  it  her.  .  .  . 
No,  no!  I  cannot!  Whatever  she  asks  me, 
it  is  too  much. 

And  he  would  walk  on,  dogged,  at  bay, 
seeking  any  and  every  promise  of  a  way  out, 
but  finding  every  issue  closed.  .  .  .  Every 
now  and  then,  in  flashes,  he  would  realise  that 
he  was  wishing  for  her  death. 

* 
*       * 

He  was  waiting  for  her  in  their  flat,  sitting 
deep  in  an  arm-chair,  worn  out  with  beating 
for  the  last  two  days  against  the  walls  of  his 


64  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

blind-alley.  .  .  .  She  came  in.  He  felt  his 
heart  thump,  and  it  went  on  thumping,  never 
stopped.  .  .  .  For  some  time  he  managed  to 
contain  himself  and  show  a  good  front.  .  .  . 
But  soon  he  could  do  it  no  longer  and  he 
begged  her  to  open  a  window.  She  did  so 
and  then  came  swiftly  and  sat  on  the  arm  of 
his  chair  and  asked  him  what  was  the  matter. 
He  looked  at  her  with  an  angry  expression 
which  said  clearly:  "Don't  you  see  that  you 
are  the  matter  with  me? "  .  .  .  She  made  him 
a  posset.  He  refused  it  and  his  eyes  said: 
"  Don't  you  see  that  what  I  want  is  my  lib- 
erty, and  for  you  to  go? "  And  she  seemed 
to  reply  with  a  tragic  obstinacy  in  seeming 
not  to  see  his  looks:  "I  will  not  give  you 
that,"  while  she  tried  to  make  herself  as 
small  as  possible,  to  assuage  his  anxiety,  and 
to  make  him  tolerate  her. 

And  now  he  reached  the  crisis  of  his  mad- 
ness and  despair,  the  beating  of  his  heart 
would  not  be  still,  and  he  had  a  growing  cer- 
tainty that  such  a  state  of  things  could  not 


ASCENT  65 

be  endured,  that  he  must  desire  and  demand 
his  right  to  live,  his  freedom ;  and  as  he  strug- 
gled, breathlessly  contemplating  the  hurt  he 
was  about  to  deal  her,  his  heart — precisely  be- 
cause of  the  commotion  in  it  and  its  furious 
beating — was  absolutely,  desperately  exposed 
to  every  kind  of  pity  and  to  every  kind  of 
fear. 

.  .  .  He  had  met  her  in  a  garden  at  night- 
fall. .  .  .  He  dragged  after  her,  with  his 
head  bowed,  with  no  strength  left  even  to 
pretend  to  enjoy  anything,  answering  her 
in  short,  gentle,  weary  sentences.  She  walked 
by  his  side,  tragically  forcing  herself  to  say 
something,  anything,  trying  not  to  be  too 
tender  in  her  dread  of  irritating  him,  and 
above  all  in  her  dread  of  having  to  ask  him 
what  was  the  matter  with  him.  .  .  .  He 
dragged  along  by  her  side.  She  walked  along 
with  him.  .  .  .  And  so  they  went,  in  the 
empty  garden,  conscious  of  the  oppression  of 
their  silence,  feeling  it  gathering  weight  from 
moment  to  moment,  and  the  impending  neces- 


66  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

sity,  growing  up  bewilderingly,  surely,  in 
them,  the  necessity  of  explanation,  obedient 
to  the  logic  of  the  world,  and  utterly  inde- 
pendent of  their  wills.  .  .  . 

They  took  a  carriage  and  stopped  it  at  the 
usual  place.  .  .  .  They  were  silent.  She 
could  not  bring  herself  to  get  out.  She  sat 
there  gloomily  with  her  hand  in  his.  .  .  . 
Neither  spoke  a  word.  .  .  .  Slowly  she  took 
up  her  bag  and  got  ready  to  go.  .  .  .  Trem- 
blingly she  said: 

"  I  will  come  to-morrow.  .  .  .  About  three 
o'clock.  .  .  ." 

He  said  faintly: 

"  Very  well." 

Still  trembling,  more  than  ever  now: 

"  Perhaps  ...  it  will  upset  your  plans. 
.  .  .  Perhaps  you  would  prefer  Thurs- 
day  " 

"  As  you  please.  .  .  .  No.  .  .  .  Very  well. 
.  .  .  To-morrow." 

Almost  on  the  point  of  collapse,  gathering 
all  her  forces,  she  said: 

"  Listen,  Felix.  ...  I  can't  go  on  living 


ASCENT  67 

like  this.  .  .  .  Answer  me.  .  .  .  Don't  you 
.  .  .  don't  you  love  me  any  longer? " 

Cowardly  he  muttered: 

"Am  I  to  tell  you  ...  that?  And  then 
to  let  you  go  back  to  your  prison!  .  .  ." 

She  withdrew  her  hand,  her  whole  being 
shrinking  away  from  him,  and  she  turned 
pale  and  answered: 

"Ah!  .  .  .  You  have  answered  me.  .  .  ." 

He  took  her  in  his  arms.  He  told  her  that 
he  was  mad  and  did  not  know  what  he  was 
saying.  .  .  .  She  did  not  hear  him  nor  see 
him.  .  .  .  The  power  of  thought  oozed  away 
in  the  presence  of  the  malevolent,  uncom- 
prehended  and  sacred  force  that  was  shatter- 
ing her  happiness,  and  numbed  with  wretched- 
ness and  her  impotence  to  understand  she 
said  very  simply: 

;<Why  don't  you  love  me  any  longer?" 

She  opened  the  door  and  he  saw  her  dis- 
appear among  the  passers-by  and  the  shop- 
keepers putting  up  their  shutters. 

He  hurried  towards  the  centre  of  the  town 


68  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

and  the  busy,  thronged  streets;  in  a  real 
frenzy.  .  .  .  Oh!  It  was  no  longer  the  frantic 
dread  of  the  future!  His  mind  was  made 
up:  to-morrow  morning,  as  soon  as  possible, 
he  would  go  to  her;  he  would  make  some  ex- 
cuse; he  would  win  her  back,  reassure  her, 
tell  her  that  they  must  .  .  .  ;  as  far  as  he  him- 
self was  concerned,  with  the  awful  palpita- 
tions of  his  heart,  he  would  contrive  as  best 
he  could.  .  .  .  For  now  he  knew  one  thing 
only,  that  it  was  beyond  his  strength  to  leave 
her.  .  .  .  No,  his  horror  was  at  the  thought 
of  the  coming  night,  which  he  would  have  to 
spend  with  his  fixed  idea,  the  fixed  image  of 
the  woman,  seeing  the  carriage  again,  the 
fatal  scene,  her  pitiful  cry,  and  the  woman 
herself,  at  home,  thinking  that  everything  was 
at  an  end.  ...  A  whole  night  spent  like 
that!  And  it  was  only  seven  o'clock!  He 
went  into  a  bar,  and  out  again  and  into  an- 
other where  he  began  to  talk  to  the  women. 
He  left  that  too  and  went  elsewhere.  .  .  .  He 
was  haunted  by  the  sight  of  the  staring  eyes 
of  the  unhappy  woman  feeling  that  every- 


ASCENT  69 

thing  cried  her  doom,  refusing  to  take  the 
fatal  step,  clinging  to  uncertainty  .  .  . ,  by 
her  terror  when  she  was  forced  to  ask  .  .  . , 
and — afterwards — by  the  utter  helplessness 
of  the  creature  of  love  lacking  love,  the  sud- 
den deathlike  despair  which  suddenly  came 
into  her  childlike  face,  her  sudden  solitude, 
her  surprise,  her  surprise  like  that  of  some 
gentle  wounded  beast  asking  "  Why? "  her  still 
loving  stupefaction  under  the  blow  that  crushed 
her.  .  .  .  Oh!  all  the  tortures  of  eternal 
bondage,  all  the  tremors  of  the  heart  of 
eternal  servitude,  all  at  once,  with  joy,  rather 
than  live  again  through  such  a  moment.  .  .  . 
He  drove  right  across  Paris.  .  .  .  He  passed 
the  stations.  If  he  had  gone  at  once  he  would 
have  already  been  far  away.  ...  It  would  all 
be  over  by  now.  .  .  .  Sooner  or  later  he  would 
have  to  go.  .  .  .  But  now  he  saw  her  in  her 
room,  sitting  up  in  her  bed,  waking  alone  in 
the  house  where  all  were  asleep,  watching  in 
silence;  she  was  thinking  that  he  was  going, 
being  borne  away  from  her  by  a  train,  that 
she  would  never  see  him  again,  that  he  was 


70  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

taking  her  heart  with  him,  and  that  she  would 
be  left  doomed  to  life-long  emptiness,  to 
memory,  doomed  for  the  whole  of  her  life, 
and  that  soon,  at  dawn,  the  first  day  of  her 
doom  would  begin.  .  .  .  And  it  was  he  who 
had  inflicted  such  a  night  of  torment  upon 
another  human  being!  His  whole  life  would 
not  be  a  sufficient  price  to  pay  for  it.  ... 
There  were  still  eight  hours  before  he  could 
go  to  her.  .  .  .  The  cafes  were  closed,  the 
lights  put  out,  the  streets  emptied  .  .  . ,  and 
he  thought:  "  Night  defers  the  distraction  of 
sorrow;  if  only  it  were  deferring  sorrow!" 
Suddenly  he  was  possessed  by  the  idea  that 
she  had  killed  herself.  He  hurried  in  the 
direction  of  her  house.  He  tried  to  think 
that  he  was  only  idiotically  inventing  things 
to  frighten  himself.  .  .  .  He  found  himself 
standing  in  front  of  her  house.  .  .  .  People 
were  coming  and  going.  .  .  .  Suppose  she 
had  not  come  home;  suppose  she  had  thrown 
herself  under  a  train.  .  .  .  He  was  conscious 
of  the  egoism  of  his  fears  that  she  would  kill 
herself.  ,  As  if  it  would  not  have  been 


ASCENT  71 

better  for  her.  .  .  .  He  went  home,  flung 
himself  fully  dressed  on  his  bed,  could  find 
no  rest,  went  out  again  at  dawn,  and  began 
to  wander  about  until  nine  o'clock  should 
come.  He  regained  a  certain  measure  of 
tranquillity  as  he  felt  the  hour  approaching 
when  he  would  be  able  to  console  her.  He 
cried  to  her  through  space:  "Do  not  weep, 
my  love.  I  am  here.  I  will  stay.  I  am 
coming.  I  love  you."  At  the  same  time  he 
thought  that  no  doubt  she  was  beginning  to 
get  used  to  the  idea  of  separation,  and  that 
it  was  horrible  of  him  to  return  to  disturb 
her  new  mastery  of  herself,  .  .  .  only  to 
leave  her  in  a  little  while. 

He  bought  a  popular  novel  and  cut  the 
pages  of  it.  ...  He  rang  at  Madeleine's 
door.  .  .  .  His  fears  returned  to  him.  .  .  . 
The  maid  opened  to  him.  He  breathed  again. 
There  was  nothing  ominous  in  her  appear- 
ance. .  .  .  He  said  that  he  had  brought  back 
a  book  he  had  borrowed,  which  Madeleine 
had  particularly  asked  for.  .  .  .  He  was 


7£  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

asked  to  wait  in  the  drawing-room.  It  ex- 
cited him  to  be  there  at  such  a  time — sym- 
bolical of  his  malady.  .  .  .  She  came  in,  pale, 
erect,  in  a  long  black  gown;  she  was  dejected 
and  composed.  He  took  her  in  his  arms  and 
pressed  her  to  him  with  a  warmth  which  he 
took  for  love  and  pity,  though  it  came  from 
the  coward's  veneration  for  the  creature  of 
courage  who  had  been  able  to  retain  her  self- 
control  through  her  unhappiness.  .  .  .  She 
suffered  him  and  kissed  him  gently;  she  was 
distant  and  consoled  him  for  the  wretched 
night  he  had  spent.  .  .  .  She  knew  that  he 
would  come  again,  that  he  was  not  callous  or 
cruel.  .  .  .  She  promised  to  come  to  him  in 
the  afternoon.  .  .  .  He  left  her  comforted; 
he  thought  his  reassurance  came  from  the  re- 
turn of  their  love,  but  it  came  from  the  knowl- 
edge that  their  union  was  doomed,  that  he  had 
confessed  and  she  had  heard  and  understood. 

* 
*      * 

She    had    understood    him.  .  .  .  She    no 


ASCENT  73 

longer  thought  their  love  eternal.  It  was 
now  a  human  thing,  something  which  would 
"  last  as  long  as  these  things  do,"  a  long 
time,  perhaps  for  ever,  but  at  the  mercy  of 
chance,  and  not  of  its  own  essence.  .  .  .  She 
saw  her  lover  now  in  a  human  light — egoistic, 
apt  to  tire.  She  still  loved  him,  but  she  no 
longer  admired  him.  .  .  . — And  she  became 
practical:  she  ceased  to  mourn  for  that  which 
was  no  longer,  and  tried  to  keep  that  which 
still  existed. 

She  strove  to  give  him  more  liberty.  .  .  . 
She  busied  herself  with  her  boy  and  her 
household.  .  .  .  She  attended  lectures!  Vis- 
ited museums!  The  poor  creature  of  ten- 
derness was  striving  to  "  understand  " !  .  .  . 
Sometimes  she  would  refuse  to  come  to  him 
on  the  plea  of  some  "  interesting  "  lecture  or 
some  "  amusing  "  tea-party.  She  was  trying 
to  make  him  believe  that  she  was  the  cause 
of  their  meeting  less  often.  .  .  .  He  was  con- 
scious of  her  effort  and  her  suffering  through 
it.  ...  And  he  was  finding  it  easier  to  bear. 


74  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

.  .  .  He  was  beginning  to  see  the  coming  of 
the  day  when  he  would  cease  to  pity  her  and 
would  find  himself  free. 

She  tried  to  make  him  believe  that  she  had 
returned  to  coquetry,  thinking  to  make  him 
feel  more  free !  .  .  .  She  hinted  at  "  flirta- 
tions "  and  her  renewed  pleasure  in  attract- 
ing attention.  .  .  .  He  was  cowardly  enough 
to  pretend  to  believe  her. 

And  yet  she  was  no  longer  the  same.  She 
was  no  longer  his  chattel;  she  was  endeavour- 
ing to  cope  with  him  .  .  .  ;  and,  further,  she 
had  a  few  shadowy  interests  outside  him.  .  .  . 
Though  he  was  considerably  relieved,  yet  he 
had  a  sort  of  masculine  irritation  at  being 
frustrated.  He  became  aware  of  a  strange 
feeling  in  himself,  a  feeling  which  he  had 
often  derided  in  other  men,  a  feeling  of  re- 
sentment against  the  woman  for  regaining 
her  self-possession  after  he  had  thrown  every- 
thing over  in  order  to  win  her. 

Gradually  he  returned  to  consciousness  of 


ASCENT  75 

his  need  of  luxury,  and  he  fed  it. — He  no 
longer  condemned  his  sisters. 

He  visualised  the  first  night  when  he  had 
gone  to  Madeleine's  room — with  her  poor 
little  corsets  hanging  over  the  back  of  a  chair. 
And  he  thought:  "  I  did  not  love  her  poverty. 
I  forced  myself  to  love  it.  I  was  full  of  re- 
gret for  the  luxury  of  the  other  women.  ..." 

And  he  mused: 

"It  is  odd:  all  middle-class  people  are 
ashamed  of  their  middle-class  tastes.  .  .  . 
They  would  like  to  have  the  tastes  of  the 
poor  .  .  .  because  only  the  tastes  of  the  poor 
are  supposed  to  be  beautiful.  I  wonder  who 
will  write  the  aesthetic  of  the  middle-classes?" 

And  he  returned  to  the  aesthetic  of  bond- 
age. .  .  .  How  fine,  he  thought,  would  be 
the  union  of  two  strong  creatures  coming 
together  in  the  simple  consciousness  of  the 
meeting  of  their  force,  with  no  base  desire 
to  bind,  or  to  seek  support.  .  .  . 

Meanwhile  he  gave  her  less  and  less. 
6 


76  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

He  saw  her  at  their  flat  at  increasingly 
long  intervals.  He  came  to  her  cruelly  free 
in  spirit,  with  a  love  that  was  entirely  con- 
scious of  its  relativeness,  a  reluctant  and  de- 
liberately calculated  ardour  of  possession. 
.  .  .  And  she  responded  with  a  nicely  meas- 
ured happiness,  cut  exactly  to  sort  with  his, 
obviously  determined  not  to  exceed  the 
bounds  he  set.  .  .  .  He  would  take  her  home, 
chatting  gaily  and  amicably,  with  never  a 
reference  to  their  intimacy.  .  .  .  And  she 
would  leave  him,  slowly,  miserably,  disillu- 
sioned, in  a  sort  of  shame  for  their  reasoned 
love. 

Came  the  anniversary  of  their  first  coming 
together.  .  .  .  Six  o'clock.  He  had  never 
mentioned  it.  ...  They  went  out.  She  still 
hoped.  .  .  .  Not  a  flower.  Not  a  word.  .  .  . 
They  parted. 

She  tried  hard  to  think  that  he  was  right, 
that  she  ought  to  cure  herself  of  such  child- 
ishness. .  .  . 

She  would  tell  herself  that  he  ought  not 


ASCENT  77 

to  feel  enslaved  by  their  meetings,  or  be 
forced  for  her  sake  to  leave  his  work  or  some 
pleasant  gathering.  .  .  .  Sometimes  she  would 
go  to  their  flat  and  read  or  play  the  piano, 
and  he  would  come  or  not,  as  he  pleased. 

One  day  he  was  out  walking  in  lovely  April 
weather.  .  .  .  She  waited  for  him.  .  .  .  He 
did  not  come.  .  .  .  Purposely  to  make  her 
used  to  it.  ...  He  was  haunted  by  the  idea 
of  her  counting  the  minutes,  opening  the  door 
at  every  sound  on  the  stairs,  watching  the 
day  dying  like  her  hopes,  going  out  shame- 
facedly past  the  porter,  and  coming  back 
again,  discountenanced.  .  .  . 

Next  day  she  told  him  that  he  had  acted 
quite  rightly. 

Often,  as  he  sat  in  some  empty  street,  he 
would  catch  a  glimmering  of  the  day  when 
he  would  leave  her — in  the  dim  future, — and 
he  would  see  the  reproachful  expression  with 
which  all  her  life  she  would  think  of  him,  with 
which  even  now  she  faced  him.  He  would 
think:  "  It  is  odd  how  resentful  they  are,  as 


78  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

though  it  were  a  man's  own  fault.  We  can't 
help  it  if  we  don't  love  them  any  longer.  .  .  ." 
He  felt  that  there  was  a  false  ring  in  his 
defence.  .  .  .  And  he  came  to  this :  "  It  is 
not  a  matter  of  loving.  She  must  have  known 
for  a  long  time  that  I  don't  love  her.  And 
she  accepts  that.  But  what  a  woman  asks  in 
such  a  case  is  that  the  man  should  go  on 
seeming  to  love,  pretending  enough  for  her 
to  be  able  to  keep  him  without  too  much  in- 
dignity, and  that  he  should  be  there  and  go 
on  seeing  her  occasionally.  .  .  .  And  the  man 
knows  perfectly  well  that  that  is  all  she  asks 
of  him.  .  .  .  And  he  could  quite  easily  do  it. 
.  .  .  But  he  does  not  want  to.  ...  Oh! 
Well!  Women  have  a  perfect  right  to  be 
resentful.  .  .  ." 

And  he  discovered  his  own  utter  helpless- 
ness: 

"  If  I  stay,  I  shall  die.  If  I  go,  she  will 
die.  .  .  .  One  of  us  must  kill  the  other.  .  .  . 
And  as  I  am  the  stronger,  I  shall  kill  her. 
.  .  .  Well  then!  no  more  thinking,  no  more 


ASCENT  79 

phrase-making;  it  is  war  at  its  most  cow- 
ardly: the  stronger  is  out  to  kill  the  weaker." 

And  he  thought  of  those  who  say:  "  What 
could  I  do  if  she  were  unhappy,  wretchedly 
married,  or  deceived  by  her  children?  .  .  ." 
And  he  answered  himself:  "I  could  comfort 
her,  hear  her  plaint.  .  .  .  That  would  be  some- 
thing. ...  I  can't  get  it  out  of  my  head 
that  that  would  be  something.  .  .  .  It's  just 
nonsense,  a  fad  on  the  part  of  the  *  thinkers ' 
who  know  nothing  whatever  of  life,  to  say 
that  it  would  not  be  something  and  that  it 
would  feed  her  unhappiness.  .  .  ." 

One  evening  he  put  his  arm  in  Madeleine's 
and  said:  "  You  see.  All  is  well.  You  are  no 
longer  anxious.  You  are  sure  of  me.  .  .  . 
Let  me  go  away  for  a  fortnight,  or  perhaps 
less.  I  shan't  go  far.  I  want  to  be  alone 
for  a  little,  to  think  over  all  the  things  that 
have  been  upsetting  us  during  the  last  three 
months.  .  .  ."  She  understood.  .  .  .  He  was 
to  go  away  on  the  next  day  but  one.  She 


80  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

came  to  the  station.  .  .  .  The  train  began  to 
move.  .  .  .  He  remained  standing  at  the  car- 
riage window  for  a  long  time.  She  smiled  at 
him. 


Ill 


HE  took  a  room  in  the  Grand  Hotel  at 
F  *  *  *,  which  at  this  season  of  the  year  was 
empty.  .  .  .  He  was  born  again.  He  took 
a  new  delight  in  seeing,  breathing,  being.  .  .  . 
He  was  absolutely  free.  .  .  .  True,  he  still 
had  ties.  But  they  were  lightly  to  be  borne, 
and  gradually  they  would  be  loosened. 

He  had  been  there  for  two  days,  but  she 
had  not  written.  He  found  reasons  why  she 
had  not  done  so,  but  he  was  astonished. 

Four  days.  .  .  .  Five  days.  .  .  .  She  did 
not  write. 

It  seemed  to  him  that  an  immeasurable 
space  of  time  and  distance  was  stretching  be- 
tween them. 

He  was  quivering  with  his  independence. 

The  sixth  day  came. 

It  ended. 

She  did  not  write. 

81 


82  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

Her  silence  was  terrible:  more  overwhelm- 
ing than  all  her  complaints.  One  thing  was 
clear,  that  as  soon  as  she  had  dared  to  look 
things  in  the  face  and  had  been  forced  to 
admit  that  she  was  no  longer  loved,  she  had 
determined  to  withdraw  into  her  own  life. 
.  .  .  He  saw  the  grim  mockery  of  her  resolu- 
tion. .  .  .  He  saw  the  woman  grimly  setting 
herself  to  the  checking  of  her  impulse,  the 
confinement  of  her  love,  the  stifling  of  her 
affection  .  .  .;  her  mute  indignation  at  hav- 
ing no  one  left  to  love;  her  gloomy  gibing 
at  love  and  love's  vows;  her  frightful  resolve 
never  to  believe  in  anything  again;  and  her 
silent  hatred.  .  .  .  He  saw  all  that.  And  at 
the  same  time  her  silence  hurt  him  like  a  blow 
and  it  seemed  to  him  that  she  was  flinging  his 
liberty  in  his  face. 

He  waited  yet  a  day.  Then  he  left. 
He  wanted  to  see  her.  He  wanted  to 
know.  .  .  .  He  wanted  first  of  all  to  know 
what  she  was  like  alone,  when  he  was  no 
longer  with  her,  to  see  her  without  her 
knowing  it. 


ASCENT  83 

Towards  nightfall,  at  the  hour  when  he 
knew  she  would  be  returning  home,  he  went 
and  took  up  his  position  in  a  corner  where  he 
could  see  her  without  being  seen.  .  .  .  He 
stood  thus  for  some  time,  excited  and  agi- 
tated. Soon,  some  distance  away,  he  saw 
her  coming  gravely  towards  him  through  the 
hurrying  throng  of  people,  with  her  eyes  fixed 
on  the  ground,  holding  her  little  boy  by  the 
hand.  He  trembled.  At  once  he  recognised 
her,  exactly  as  he  had  felt  she  would  be, 
gloomy,  sad,  in  travail  to  regain  the  solitude 
of  her  heart.  She  came  towards  him;  every 
line  in  her  figure  expressed  heaviness  and  yet 
she  was  thinner,  had  lost  her  lissomeness.  She 
raised  her  head;  he  saw  that  her  childlike 
features  had  in  a  week  become  sharply  defined, 
had  lost  their  play  and  lightness,  and  that 
they  were  disfigured  not  so  much  by  the 
marks  of  suffering  as  by  the  marks  of  her 
will;  he  saw  that  her  eyes  were  glassy  and 
staring,  as  though  they  had  lost  their  energy, 
and  looked  for  nothing,  expected  nothing. 
.  .  .  Now  she  was  at  the  foot  of  the  slope 


84.  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

which  led  to  her  house,  and  she  went  slowly 
up  it,  as  though  she  were  dragging  with  her 
the  burden  of  her  servitude  that  day  by  day 
would  weigh  upon  her  whole  existence.  And 
he  thought:  "  Every  night  of  her  life  she  will 
go  up  that  slope  in  exactly  the  same  way!" 
Then  he  could  not  contain  himself.  He 
wanted  to  cry  out :  "  Madeleine,  you  are  not 
alone.  ...  I  will  not  leave  you.  I  love  you." 
He  wanted  to  rush  out  of  his  hiding-place 
and  go  to  her.  .  .  .  He  could  easily  contrive 
to  make  her  hear  him.  .  .  .  He  stopped.  His 
heart  was  like  to  break.  It  was  a  supreme 
moment.  What!  With  the  poor  woman 
trying  to  gather  the  fragments  of  her  life! 
.  .  .  Should  he  go  and  upset  her  as  he  had 
done  before,  only  to  leave  her  again?  .  .  . 
For  he  did  not  love  her.  .  .  .  Now  she  was 
quite  close  to  him.  .  .  .  Only  a  word,  a  look, 
and  she  would  be  restored  to  life.  .  .  .  Oh, 
come!  She  knew  what  his  words  were  worth! 
And  besides  she  asked  nothing  of  him.  She 
asked  only  to  be  left  in  peace,  to  win  back 
to  serenity.  .  .  .  Not  for  her  sake  would  he 


ASCENT  85 

speak,  but  for  his  own,  being  too  cowardly 
to  bear  his  own  cruelty.  .  .  .  Come,  come! 
A  truce  to  such  cowardice.  .  .  .  Breathlessly 
he  leaned  back  against  the  wall  and  swore 
that  he  would  not  move.  .  .  .  He  let  her 
pass.  .  .  . 

He  let  her  pass.  .  .  .  When  she  had  gone, 
he  came  out  of  his  hiding-place  and  went 
down  a  street  to  the  right,  up  the  hill.  He 
walked  on,  still  agitated.  .  .  .  He  knew  that 
it  was  for  shabby,  cowardly  reasons  that  he 
had  made  himself  believe  that  she  was  so  well 
on  the  road  to  recovery  and  would  be  dis- 
tressed if  he  had  troubled  her  again.  .  .  .  He 
went  on  and  on.  ...  He  came  to  a  great 
empty  square,  looking  down  on  the  quarter, 
where  there  were  several  seats.  He  sat  down 
on  one  of  them. 

Night  came.  He  felt  the  last  gusts  of  his 
emotion  dying  down  with  the  light  of  day. 
.  .  .  The  whole  world  was  sinking  into  rest. 
.  .  .  Now  he  was  calm.  .  .  .  And  his  calm- 


86  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

ness  endured.  .  .  .  Then  he  ventured  to  call 
to  mind  the  image  of  Madeleine  returning 
home,  to  her  misery,  yearning  towards  her 
lover,  and  yet  with  all  her  force  suppressing 
her  yearning.  .  .  .  And  her  image  did  not 
bring  him  so  much  agony  as  he  had  feared. 
He  considered  it  more  fixedly,  more  deliber- 
ately, more  searchingly.  .  .  .  And  he  found 
that  he  could  bear  it.  ...  Then  he  called  to 
mind  the  image  of  Madeleine  as  she  would 
be  in  five  years,  ten  years,  going  up  the  street 
just  as  he  had  seen  her  now.  .  .  .  And  he  could 
bear  that  too.  .  .  .  Then  he  was  visited  by  a 
mortal  sadness.  He  understood  that  he  had 
suffered  and  groaned  for  the  last  time.  .  .  . 
For  almost  two  years  he  had  been  weeping 
over  this  woman.  He  had  exhausted  his  ca- 
pacity for  pity.  No  longer  would  he  have 
any  but  the  gentlest  tears.  It  was  fin- 
ished. 

He  remained  sitting  on  the  seat  and  could 
not  bring  himself  to  leave,  or  to  take  action. 
He  stayed,  dully  contemplating  his  empty 


ASCENT  87 

heart,  gazing  down  at  the  ruins  of  three  years 
of  his  life.    He  stayed.    Dull.  .  .  . 

Then  in  the  solemn  silence  of  the  night  he 
saw  quite  clearly  and  simply  the  whole  course 
of  the  adventure: 

He  had  been  living  free,  happy  and  lustily, 
when  he  had  met  an  unhappy  woman.  And 
he  had  stooped  to  her  and  he  had  wept.  And, 
mad  with  love  and  gratitude,  she  had  taken 
him  to  her  arms.  And  at  first  he  had  enjoyed 
it  and  acquiesced.  Then  when  the  tie  between 
them  and  his  tenderness  had  weakened  and 
he  had  wished  to  move  on  and  had  tried  to 
return  to  the  high  road  of  freedom  he  had 
been  too  late,  his  veins  had  been  filled  with 
the  poison  of  pity.  .  .  .  And  he  had  almost 
died  of  it.  ... 

Then,  in  the  solemn  silence  of  the  night, 
clearly  and  simply  the  meaning  of  his  adven- 
ture appeared  to  him: 

Madeleine  was  no  longer  the  poor  pretty 


88  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

little  fair-haired  woman  who  dined  miserably 
in  her  stuffy  room  with  her  stupid  husband 
and  the  child  to  whom  she  was  indiffer- 
ent .  .  .  ;  she  was  all  women,  the  highest  and 
the  lowliest,  she  stood  for  all  the  creatures  of 
weakness  and  servitude.  And  what  she  had 
done  was  what  they  would  all  have  done, 
what  they  would  always  do.  Always  madly, 
fiercely  they  would  cling  to  the  free,  strong 
man,  who,  alone  among  men,  would  regard 
them  as  other  than  a  prey,  and  give  them  a 
little  gentleness,  a  little  love.  And  always, 
at  the  same  time,  in  obedience  to  a  secret  in- 
stinct, they  would  strive  surreptitiously  to 
abolish  in  him  the  springs  of  force  and  lib- 
erty— the  worship  of  the  Idea,  and  the  taste 
for  the  things  of  the  polite  world — and  to 
develope  in  him  the  worship  of  the  heart,  to 
give  free  play  in  it  for  the  powers  of  weak- 
ness and  vassalage.  .  .  .  And  always  in  his 
happiness  the  man  would  at  first  submit, 
unsuspectingly,  disarmedly;  more  than  thatl 
he  would  at  first  himself  set  about  destroying 
his  strength  and  enthroning  his  weakness  be- 


ASCENT  89 

cause  he  had  been — strong  though  he  was — 
because  he  had  been — free  though  he  was — 
brought  up  in  the  aesthetic  of  the  weak  and 
the  servile;  because  there  is  no  other  aesthetic. 
.  .  .  And  always  in  his  happiness  the  man 
would  come  near  to  death  because  in  his  en- 
joyment he  had  exhausted  his  infinite  sensi- 
bility, because  he  had  chosen  to  weep  with  the 
unhappy  without  being  accustomed,  as  they 
are,  to  tears;  because,  in  fine,  he  would  feel 
pity.  .  .  . 

For  pity  is  death:  that  is  what  he  had 
learned,  what  he  now  knew,  what  he  would 
never  forget.  .  .  .  But  if  he  knew  it,  it  was 
because  he  had  really  felt  pity,  because  his 
heart  had  been  cleft  by  the  unhappy  woman's 
misery,  and  had  blindly  yielded  to  their  real 
communion  and  hour  by  hour,  through  the 
wound  made  in  its  integrity,  had  suffered  all 
its  power  of  life  and  all  its  desire  to  ebb 
away.  And  then  he  dreamed  of  another 
kind  of  pity,  no  doubt  equally  sincere,  that 
should  not  prevent  those  who  practise  it  from 


90  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

going  and  coming,  and  seeking  amusement, 
and  looking  after  their  affairs  and  bringing 
up  their  children.  .  .  .  And  again  he  dreamed 
of  another  kind  of  pity  which  should  gently 
raise  the  wretched  kneeling  suppliants,  but 
should  not  prevent  the  Redeemer  who  ex- 
pounds it  from  uttering  fine  phrases,  and 
making  grand  gestures,  and  thinking  of  lay- 
ing low  the  proud  ones  of  the  earth.  .  .  .  Ah ! 
such  kinds  of  pity  can  be  practised,  can  be 
propagated,  can  be  taught.  .  .  .  They  do  not 
lead  to  death!  . 


And  he  hypnotised  himself  with  reiteration 
of  this  truth:  "  Pity  is  death.  Pity  is  death." 
.  .  .  And  he  wished  to  live.  .  .  .  Then?  .  .  . 
Then?  .  .  . 

He  shrank  for  a  long  time  before  the 
answer  which  now  faced  him,  logical,  thun- 
derous, implacable.  .  .  .  He  shrank  from  it 
for  a  long  time.  .  .  .  Then,  slowly,  he  came 
to  it,  like  a  child  coming  to  the  estate  of 


ASCENT  91 

manhood,  with  all  the  solemn  simplicity  of 
an  ordination.  .  .  . 

Then.  .  .  .  He  would  be  hard.  .  .  .  With- 
out a  word,  with  never  a  look  he  would  pass 
by  all  such  dramas,  such  distress,  the  sight 
of  human  beings  walled  up  alive  in  their 
inward  life,  all  the  women  crucified  on  the 
marriage  bed,  turning  their  lips  away  from 
their  tyrants.  .  .  .  And  they  would  call  to 
him,  they  would  hold  out  their  arms  to  him, 
guessing  that  he  understood,  that  his  hardness 
was  feigned;  and  the  world  would  cry  shame 
upon  him — How  cold  he  is!  How  hard! 
What  a  cruel  nature! — He  would  let  them 
say  and  think  what  they  liked.  .  .  .  And  he 
would  go  to  the  strong,  to  men,  to  the  think- 
ers, the  creators,  to  those  who  never  expect 
anything  of  a  man.  .  .  .  And  perhaps  one 
day  he  would  be  strong  enough  to  dare  to 
face  the  weak  and  the  unhappy  and  come  to 
their  aid.  .  .  .  But  his  heart  was  breaking 
as  he  felt  that  he  could  have  no  tenderness 
for  them.  For  he  was  naturally  tender:  and 


92  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

he  wept  there  in  the  darkness  and  said  to 
himself:  "They  talk  of  the  tears  of  pity. 
But  who  shall  tell  of  the  tears  of  those  who 
have  stifled  their  pity  in  order  to  make  them- 
selves hard.  .  .  ." 

But  at  least  his  hardness  was  a  thing 
which  he  had  bought  and  paid  for  with  the 
suffering  of  unhappy  pity.  .  .  .  His  hard- 
ness was  sad,  silent,  resigned.  .  .  .  He  wished 
to  suffer  from  it,  out  of  respect,  as  it  were, 
for  those  whom  he  would  not  help.  And 
from  his  calvary  he  cried  to  the  apostles  of 
hardness  in  happiness :  "  Shame,  shame  on 
those  who  rejoice  in  their  hardness." 

For  a  long  time  he  remained  in  silent 
prayer  at  the  feet  of  that  hard  God  who  had 
made  the  strong;  the  masters;  the  real  mas- 
ters, those  who  can  check  their  tears  in  order 
to  understand  them.  .  .  .  For  a  long  time 
he  stayed  thus.  .  .  .  Day  came,  and  lit  up 
the  street  where  Madeleine  lived  and  the 
little  house  where  she  lay  asleep.  .  .  .  And 


ASCENT  93 

the  street  seemed  to  him  to  be  very  much 
like  any  other  street.  .  .  .  And  the  little 
house  was  much  less  distinctive  than  it  had 
been  before.  .  .  .  Then  he  understood  that 
during  the  night  the  outline  of  his  love  had 
faded  away  into  eternal  lines.  Then  he  col- 
lapsed and  desperately  he  held  out  his  arms 
as  though  he  wished  to  clutch  and  hold  in  his 
trembling  hands  those  beloved  fleeting  things 
which  had  been  his  life,  his  tears,  his  youth. 
.  .  .  And  his  arms  fell  by  his  sides  once  more 
...  in  the  last  convulsion  of  his  dying  love. 
.  .  .  He  left  the  seat  and  walked  down  into 
the  town. 


PART  II 
DOWNFALL 


Until  thou  shalt  be  dead  to  all 
Created  love,  thou  shalt  not  know  me. 

(Imitation,  III.  xlii.) 


"On!  sir,"  said  the  nurse  indignantly, 
'  You  are  not  even  looking  at  Suzanne's 
splendid  tunnel." 

"  Very  fine,"  said  Felix,  turning "  But 

we'll  make  an  even  better  one  than  that." 

He  put  two  chairs  back  to  back  and 
laid  a  large  atlas  across  the  space  between 
them. 

The  child  clapped  her  hands: 

"  Look  out! "  she  cried.  "  Get  out  of  the 
way!  The  train  is  coming.  .  .  ." 

She  went  to  the  end  of  the  passage  to  get 
a  good  run.  Then  she  came  with  a  rush, 
working  her  arms  like  a  crank,  whistling  and 
puffing,  gathering  speed  until  she  dashed 
through  the  improvised  tunnel  into  the  arms 
of  her  father  and  mother. 

"  Now,"  she  said,  "  I'll  go  and  fetch  my 
biplane." 

But  Clemence  stopped  her: 

97 


98  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

"  No,  no.  You  are  out  of  breath.  .  .  .  And 
you  know  your  father  doesn't  like  you  to 
turn  his  study  into  a  circus.  .  .  .  Let  us  look 
at  some  pictures  and  then  you  can  go  to 
bed." 

"Come!"  said  Felix,  "  Suzanne  shall  look 
at  the  new  picture  post-cards  Mamma  has 
put  in  the  album." 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  the  little  girl. 

Felix  went  and  fetched  the  album.  He 
took  the  child  on  his  knee  and  Clemence 
came  and  sat  on  the  arm  of  his  chair.  They 
turned  the  pages  and  the  child  delighted  their 
hearts  by  the  freshness  of  her  questions,  and 
her  delight  in  their  play,  and  the  sureness  of 
her  sovereignty  over  her  father  and  mother. 
.  .  .  Soon  her  questions  grew  less  eager,  her 
little  hands  clutched  the  book  less  tightly,  her 
head  nodded  and  she  fell  asleep  on  her  father's 
shoulder.  .  .  .  He  was  afraid  of  waking  her 
by  handing  her  over  to  the  two  women,  and 
they  stood  smiling  at  his  embarrassment.  .  .  . 
Gently  they  took  her  from  him  and  Clemence, 
feeling  a  little  tired,  held  out  her  cheek  to  her 


DOWNFALL  99 

husband  and  the  two  women  went  out  slowly 
with  the  child. 

Felix  stayed  in  his  chair  in  front  of  the 
fire.  It  was  too  early  for  him  to  begin  to 
work.  ...  In  the  street  outside  all  was  si- 
lent. .  .  .  About  him  was  the  dying  noise 
of  his  household  preparing  for  sleep,  the 
closing  of  a  door,  the  last  Sittings  to  and 
fro  of  the  servants  finishing  their  work.  .  .  . 
With  his  chin  in  his  hand  and  his  eyes  fixed 
on  the  flames  he  dreamed.  .  .  .  He  thought 
of  that  queer  little  creature,  the  child,  and 
the  young  woman,  who  were  his  child,  his 
wife:  the  family  that  he  had  begotten.  .  .  . 
He  looked  round  at  the  study  where  he  spent 
his  life,  at  the  tea  which  was  made  for  him  to 
drink  during  the  night  while  he  was  sitting 
up  alone:  he  marked  the  comfort  of  it  all, 
the  kind  of  return  to  his  own  element  that 
he  felt  every  evening  when  they  left  him  and 
went  to  bed;  was  it  all  not  a  sufficient  indi- 
cation of  his  real  nature — an  old  solitary 
student,  a  celibate  philosopher?  .  .  .  And  he 


100  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

had  founded  a  family!  .  .  .  And  it  was 
turning  out  very  well.  .  .  .  He  was  very 
happy.  .  .  .  He  could  not  do  without  them 
now.  .  .  .  How  odd!  .  .  . 

He  thought  of  how  it  had  all  come  about. 
...  It  would  soon  be  ten  years  ago  now. 
...  It  had  happened  after  a  violent  crisis  of 
feeling — (How  long  ago  that  crisis  seemed! 
It  seemed  impossible  that  a  man  could  get 
into  such  a  condition  over  a  woman's  whim- 
perings!)— :  he  had  just  discovered  the  in- 
tellectual life — the  real  life  of  the  intellect, — 
not  the  dallying  with  ideas  that  had  been 
familiar  to  him  as  to  all  the  men  of  his  class 
on  leaving  college,  not  the  fluttering  of  doc- 
trines between  a  call  and  a  dinner-party,  but 
a  passionate,  permanent,  exclusive  possession, 
spending  weeks  together  in  unearthing  a  con- 
cept with  never  a  thought  for  anything  else — 
the  fevered  toil  of  such  research,  and  the 
agony  of  being  baffled,  and  the  joys  of 
triumph,  and  the  breathless  fructifying  of 
one  idea  by  another,  with  his  whole  being 
at  stretch  to  discover  whether  such  and 


DOWNFALL  101 

such  an  idea  would  beget  such  and  such 
another  or  its  opposite; — and  he  had  just 
then  discovered  that  such  a  life  was  his 
law,  his  order,  the  one  thing  that  bound 
him  to  himself,  his  means  of  full  self-realisa- 
tion, and  that  every  other  kind  of  activity 
was  for  him  a  sham,  a  lie,  boredom.  .  .  .  But 
at  the  same  time  he  had  discovered  that  if 
he  was  to  have  his  intellectual  life  fully  he 
must  provide  for  the  question  of  love;  he 
must  bring  to  an  end  the  adventure  which, 
however  little  sentimental  it  might  be,  took 
up  his  time,  upset  him,  and,  above  all,  forced 
him  to  be  conscious  in  his  love.  .  .  .  His 
mind  demanded  freedom  from  his  body:  the 
idea  of  marriage  dogged  him.  .  .  .  And  he 
felt  that  it  was  impossible.  .  .  . 

True,  it  would  be  quite  easy  to  find 
women  who  would  let  him  work  and  would 
respect  his  independence,  women  who  would 
not  desire  to  monopolise  "  all  his  thoughts." 
.  .  .  But  what  kind  of  women?  Little  pro- 
vincial misses,  admirably  brought  up  to  be 
negative  by  their  families  or  the  priests,  who 


102  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

would  not  be  embarrassing  only  because  they 
were  nothing.  Or  cold  women.  Or  "  intellec- 
tuals "  with  theories  about  mutual  independ- 
ence. Or  a  mystical  woman,  infatuated  with 
self-sacrifice,  who  would  force  upon  him  the 
monstrous  spectacle  of  a  creature  delighting 
in  its  own  self-mutilation.  ...  As  for  the 
woman  he  was  seeking,  a  woman  who  would 
let  him  be  quiet  and  would  be  neither  nega- 
tive nor  inhuman,  even  supposing  such  an 
one  existed,  he  had  no  reason  to  think  that 
he  would  ever  find  her.  .  .  . 

And  then  he  found  her.  .  .  .  He  found  her 
during  a  stay  with  some  friends,  buried  in  an 
old  country-house  in  Brittany,  living  with 
her  father  and  younger  brother,  the  very 
woman,  one  who  was  at  the  same  time  human, 
desirous  of  companionship  and  love  and 
clearly  tolerant  of  a  man's  liberty,  not  as  a 
matter  of  "principle"  (he  had  still  to  hear 
Clemence  propound  a  "  principle  "),  still  less 
from  any  religious  tenet  or  scruple  (she  was 
hardly  at  all  pious),  but  from  a  sort  of  in- 
born diffidence  before  the  inmost  lives  of 


DOWNFALL  103 

others,  an  instinctively  aristocratic  temperate- 
ness  in  her  desire  to  taste  the  human  soul. 
.  .  .  He  remembered  the  strange  impression 
of  reasonable  tenderness  that  he  had  had  at 
first  sight  of  the  tall  girl  with  the  clear  af- 
fectionate expression  in  her  eyes,  and  her 
sensitive  laughing  mouth  and  her  fine  healthy 
figure;  she  was  gentle  to  all  who  surrounded 
her,  and  the  fury  of  giving  was  entirely  for- 
eign to  her;  she  was  happy  in  her  garden,  but 
by  no  means  greedy  to  "  take  nature  to  her 
bosom  " ;  she  delighted  in  art  and  every  ex- 
pression of  the  soul,  but  in  measured  expres- 
sion, preferring  Mozart  to  Schumann.  .  .  . 
In  everything  she  took  up  she  was  moderate, 
in  everything  she  felt  she  was  reasonable:  to 
him  she  was  as  though  she  had  strayed  into 
the  vulgar  age,  like  one  of  those  Greek  fig- 
ures, that  with  love  in  their  hearts,  skilfully 
weave  their  web  with  a  golden  shuttle.  .  .  . 
He  had  tried  to  test  her  and  had  revealed 
to  her  the  fervour  of  the  modern  soul,  the 
literature  of  "absolute"  love  (she  had  ac- 
cepted the  idea  of  the  fact  of  love  in  the 


104  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

spirit  of  the  pagan  virgins  bathing  the  young 
warriors),  the  music  of  passionate  conjunc- 
tion, "  the  indiscriminate  "  "  union  of  souls." 
.  .  .  He  watched  her  to  see  whether  she  would 
like  these  things  and  be  false  to  her  real  nature ! 
.  .  .  But  she  did  not  even  read  through  the 
books  and  she  would  close  the  music  and 
begin  to  play  by  heart  some  "  movement "  of 
Schubert.  .  .  . 

Then  one  evening  he  spoke  of  a  friend  who 
had  met  the  woman  of  his  desire,  and  how 
his  friend  wished  to  live  apart  from  the  world 
and  bury  himself  in  abstract  thought,  so  that 
he  hesitated  about  offering  so  young  a  crea- 
ture a  share  in  such  an  austere  life.  .  .  .  And, 
quite  simply,  she  told  him  that  she  would  ac- 
cept such  a  life. 

And  he  had  married  her.  .  .  .  And  the 
marriage  had  made  no  change  in  him:  she 
had  proved  herself  the  wife  he  had  thought 
she  would  be :  loving,  never  intruding,  tranquil 
and  collected  in  her  love.  .  .  .  And  then,  de- 
livered from  chance,  removed  from  the  tur- 
bulence of  the  flesh,  he  had  attained  the  ex- 


DOWNFALL  105 

alted  life  of  the  mind:  and  he  had  begun  the 
composition  of  a  great  work. 

Only  on  one  evening — two  years  after  their 
marriage;  she  used  to  sit  near  him,  reading, 
while  he  worked — had  she  laid  down  her  book 
and  put  her  arms  round  his  neck  and  said: 
"  Why  don't  you  try  to  let  me  understand 
what  you  are  doing? "  And  he  had  mur- 
mured :  "  It  is  very  dry.  ...  I  am  no  good 
as  a  teacher."  Then  she  had  turned  away 
and  sat  down.  .  .  .  That  was  seven  years 
ago.  .  .  .  She  had  never  returned  to  the  sub- 
ject. 

And  she  had  desired  a  child.  .  .  .  They 
had  had  a  child.  .  .  .  And  she  was  an  ex- 
quisite little  creature,  subtle,  intelligent, 
bringing  a  note  of  youth  and  flowers  into 
his  rather  grey  life.  .  .  . 

So  he  had  these  two  creatures  in  his  life. 
And,  living  with  them,  never  disturbed  by 
them,  he  went  on  with  his  work.  For  a  few 
hours  every  day  he  shared  in  their  existence, 
but  once  he  passed  into  his  own  room  his  life 
was  his  own  and  he  could  escape  into  his  own 


106  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

thoughts.  ...  So  he  had  realised  the  fab- 
ulous dream:  the  integrity  of  his  own  per- 
sonality though  he  lived  with  a  woman  and 
a  child,  and  the  exalted  life  of  the  mind  in 
the  state  of  marriage.  .  .  . 

Sometimes,  however,  he  would  be  oppressed 
by  fear.  ...  It  seemed  to  him  that  there 
was  a  sort  of  legerdemain  in  his  life.  A  man 
must  pay  for  having  taken  to  himself  a 
family.  .  .  .  One  day  they  would  force  them- 
selves upon  his  attention  and  he  would  have 
to  give  his  mind  to  the  two  creatures  who 
were  sleeping  upstairs  while  he  was  working. 
.  .  .  Bah!  That  was  just  the  conclusion  of 
a  mathematician  wanting  life  to  be  an  exact 
equation!  .  .  . 

And  now,  as  he  stood  by  his  fire,  looking 
at  his  books,  his  papers,  his  drawers,  his 
shelves,  he  began  to  think  of  his  work,  the 
strange  intellectual  activity  to  which,  sitting 
alone  in  that  room,  he  had  devoted  himself 
for  almost  ten  years:  the  probing  into  his 
own  thoughts,  the  sifting  of  his  real  thoughts 


DOWNFALL  107 

about  great  problems,  the  determination  of 
his  philosophic  entity;  and,  at  the  same  time, 
—as  at  every  step  he  observed  that  what  he 
believed  to  be  thought  was  not  thought,  that 
the  terms  which  he  combined  in  his  mind  (the 
"  simple  "  terms  which  need  no  definition  be- 
cause everybody  is  agreed  about  them)  had 
at  bottom  no  really  clear  meaning  for  him,— 
at  the  same  time  the  analysis  of  the  "  sim- 
plest," the  most  fundamental  ideas  of  philo- 
sophic thought.  ...  It  was  the  work  of  his 
flesh  and  blood:  nights  and  nights  of  fevered 
effort  to  make  such  and  such  a  thought  clear, 
to  arrive  at  such  and  such  a  distinction.  .  .  . 
And  they  say  that  analysis  is  a  dead  thing! 
It  was  a  unique  work,  which  no  one  had  done 
at  least  with  any  firmness  of  purpose,  which 
no  one  would  do  in  the  future  since  men  have 
become  contemptuous  of  pure  ideas  and  taken 
to  a  pathetic  philosophy,  which  things  will 
only  wax  great  in  the  democratic  heaven.  .  .  . 
And  now  he  thought  of  what  he  had  already 
done,  of  those  elements  of  his  ideas  which  he 

had  already  disentangled;  his  ideas  about  the 

8 


108  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

origin  of  the  world  and  how  its  infinity  was 
only  the  result  of  a  taste — for  the  seduction 
of  infinity; — his  ideas  about  that  Being  which 
could  only  be  thought  of  in  terms  of  quality, 
and  how  impossible  it  was  for  a  finite  being 
to  think  such  a  thing.  .  .  .  Now  he  had  come 
to  the  idea  of  movement;  he  would  soon  have 
established  the  two  profoundly  distinct  ideas 
— of  dynamism  and  continuity — which  are 
confounded  under  one  name.  Then  he  would 
elucidate  his  ideas  about  the  appearance  of 
life,  as  to  whether  or  no  he  thought  it  a  dis- 
continuity: and  how  discontinuity  does  not 
necessarily  entail  a  miracle;  his  ideas  concern- 
ing the  appearance  of  the  concept,  the  appear- 
ance of  social  feelings,  and  sympathy  between 
human  beings  and  how  it  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  return  to  God.  .  .  .  He  would  say  all 
these  things.  He  was  still  young.  .  .  .  He 
saw  his  work  finished.  .  .  .  He  dreamed  of 
the  day  when,  concerning  all  these  great 
problems,  while  men  were  still  wrangling 
because  none  of  them  at  bottom  really  knew 
what  he  thought,  he  would  say  calmly:  "On 


DOWNFALL  109 

that  point  I  know  perfectly  clearly  what  I 
think;  and  if  my  ideas  only  originate  in  some 
preference,  I  know  that  too."  And  with  all 
the  might  of  his  love  and  pride,  as  others  hug 
their  children  or  as  the  originators  of  great 
schemes  hug  the  idea  of  their  power,  he 
hugged  the  idea  of  the  work  upon  which  he 
was  engaged,  wherein  he  should  tell  men  to 
what  a  fierce  desire  to  rise  above  his  being 
to  the  idea  of  his  being,  to  what  a  thirst  for 
consciousness,  to  what  a  pitch  of  morality, 
one  man  had  soared. 

He  threw  a  block  of  wood  on  the  fire  and 
plunged  into  his  work.  .  .  .  And  he  gave 
hardly  a  thought  to  the  woman  and  the  child 
sleeping  upstairs. 


II 

IT  was  on  a  Sunday  morning,  on  her  way 
home  from  the  Bois,  that  Suzanne  first  com- 
plained of  a  slight  pain  in  her  hip:  it  hurt 
her  a  little  when  she  ran  too  fast,  or  went 
upstairs  too  quickly,  or  stood  for  too  long. 
Oh!  It  did  not  hurt  very  much.  .  .  .  She 
complained  again  the  next  day.  ...  A  slight 
weakness  in  her  knee.  As  a  matter  of  form 
they  sent  for  the  doctor.  He  examined  her, 
probed  her,  questioned  her.  .  .  .  Then  he 
said  that  it  was  nothing,  just  a  growing-pain 
very  common  at  her  age,  and  advised  them 
to  keep  her  from  running  too  much  for  the 
time  being,  and  to  make  her  lie  down  for  a 
few  hours  every  day,  just  for  a  few  days.  .  .  . 

She  lay  down  for  two  hours  after  lunch, 
every  day.  Then  again  towards  the  end  of 
the  day.  She  was  very  tractable  and  reason- 
able and  gave  up  playing.  .  .  .  They  took  to 

no 


DOWNFALL  111 

reading  her  stories  and  giving  her  pictures  to 
look  at.  ...  And  her  little  friends  would 
come  and  see  her.  .  .  . 

Felix  used  to  come  in  at  five  and  take  tea 
with  them.  Then  he  would  go  back  to  his 
study,  not  without  noticing  that  there  was 
less  noise  in  the  passages. 


.  .  .  Felix  had  at  last  perfectly  distin- 
guished the  two  ideas  of  movement  which 
were  universally  confounded.  Now  he  was 
busy  with  the  history  of  the  confusion,  show- 
ing the  various  forms  which  it  had  taken  in 
the  minds  of  the  greatest  thinkers.  .  .  . 

One  night  he  had  just  finished  a  memoir 
of  Descartes  and  had  written  several  pages 
to  expound  the  form  the  confusion  had  taken 
in  his  mind.  .  .  . 

Now,  sunk  deep  in  his  arm-chair,  in  a  dark 
corner  of  his  study,  he  was  drifting  off  into  a 


112  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

reverie  about  what  he  had  been  reading.  .  .  . 
He  thought  of  Descartes  at  the  moment  of 
his  life  when  he  had  written  his  famous  an- 
swer. ...  It  was  at  the  time  when  he  had 
quarrelled  with  the  Fathers  of  Clermont. 
He  remembered  the  account  of  the  quarrel  in 
the  biography:  the  philosopher's  wrath  be- 
cause the  Fathers  had  distorted  his  ideas  in 
order  to  prove  themselves  right,  as  if  he 
ought  not  to  have  remembered,  said  Baillet, 
that  every  master  is  obliged  to  forge  chimeras 
for  his  pupils  to  give  them  practice  in  dis- 
putation. ...  It  was  at  the  time  when  he 
was  preparing  his  Philosophy  for  publication. 
...  It  was  also  the  year  when  he  had  lost 
his  little  girl,  " his  beloved  Francine.  ..." 
Her  death  had  given  him,  "  the  greatest  sor- 
row he  had  ever  felt  in  his  life.  .  .  .  He 
wrote  the  story  of  Francine  on  the  fly-leaf 
of  a  book.  .  .  .  He  wept  for  her  most  ten- 
derly. .  .  ."  He  visualised  the  great  thinker, 
already  an  old  man,  bending  over  his  dying 
child.  .  .  .  He  liked — why? — the  image  of 
the  suffering  child,  cradled  in  the  verses  of 


DOWNFALL  113 

a  gentle  poet  on  the  death  of  a  very  dear  little 
girl.  .  .  .  And,  not  without  a  certain  pride, 
he  thought  of  his  own  little  girl,  the  charm  of 
his  life  and  work,  smiling  and  happy,  suffer- 
ing a  little  for  the  moment,  lying  down  to 
ward  off  a  passing  fatigue.  ...  It  would 
soon  go.  ...  He  lingered  over  her  im- 
age  

Suddenly  an  idea  sprang  to  life  in  his  mind, 
swamping  every  other:  the  idea  that  Suzanne 
was  really  ill:  the  pains  in  her  hip,  the  weak- 
ness in  her  knees,  were  symptoms  of  hip-dis- 
ease .  .  .  the  "  growing-pains  "  were  just  the 
doctor's  nonsense  by  way  of  reassuring  the 
child's  parents! 

He  leaped  to  his  feet,  took  down  an  en- 
cyclopaedia and  feverishly  turned  over  the 
pages.  He  read  breathlessly,  devouring  the 
words.  .  .  .  Everything  confirmed  his  fears. 
Each  sentence  as  he  read  it  forced  him  into 
certainty.  It  was  as  though  the  article  had 
been  written  about  Suzanne.  .  .  .  He  did 
not  finish  it.  He  was  certain.  .  .  .  Yes,  yes. 
Of  course:  people  always  believe  they  have 


114  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

every  disease  when  they  read  about  them. 
But  sometimes  they  are  right.  .  .  .  How 
could  he  for  one  moment  have  listened  to  the 
doctor's  humbug?  .  .  .  But  then,  it  was  in- 
evitable that  she  should  be  stricken  down,  that 
some  great  misfortune  should  come  to  him. 
It  was  a  punishment  for  his  egoism,  for  his 
monstrous  life  of  the  mind.  His  life  for  the 
past  ten  years  had  been  a  defiance  of  the 
laws  of  humanity.  God  was  punishing  him. 
It  seemed  to  him  that  the  bond  of  human  love, 
the  spiritual  accord  of  those  who  were  joined 
together  and  lived  one  for  another,  was  rising 
about  him,  crying  shame  upon  his  life  and 
demanding  his  expiation  of  it.  ...  He  was 
appalled  by  his  certainty.  .  .  .  He  did  not 
know  what  he  was  doing.  .  .  .  He  lit  a  lamp. 
.  .  .  Why?  .  .  .  Because  he  wanted  to  go 
and  look  at  his  child,  to  gaze  and  gaze  at 
her:  he  would  see  her,  he  would  know.  .  .  . 

He  went  down  the  passage  on  tiptoe,  see- 
ing himself,  with  deep  emotion,  objectively, 
— a  man  walking  through  the  darkness  trem- 
bling for  his  sleeping  dear  ones,  trembling 


DOWNFALL  115 

at  the  oppressive  silence  of  the  house,  trem- 
bling at  the  thought  of  the  dreadful  stillness 
and  tranquillity  of  those  in  the  house  who 
did  not  yet  know.  .  .  . 

He  entered  the  room.  On  a  chair  were  her 
little  garments  neatly  folded  up:  in  an  arm- 
chair were  her  favourite  toys.  .  .  .  He  went 
up  to  the  bed,  and,  screening  the  light  with 
his  hands,  he  bent  over  the  child,  and  trem- 
bled. She  was  asleep  in  her  little  bed  as  in 
a  sanctuary,  with  her  lips  a  little  open,  her 
breathing  relaxed,  her  fists  closed,  seemingly 
deep  in  unconsciousness,  as  though  she  were 
gathering  all  her  strength  in  absolute  trust. 
.  .  .  He  almost  swooned.  .  .  .  However,  he 
pulled  himself  together,  and,  concentrating 
all  his  powers  on  the  will  to  see  and  under- 
stand, as  though  he  suddenly  believed  that  the 
will  to  knowledge  gives  knowledge,  he  fixed 
his  eyes  on  the  sleeping  child.  ...  So  he 
stood,  bending  over  her.  .  .  . 

Then,  for  the  first  time,  gradually  he  was 
overcome  by  a  feeling  that  the  little  body 
lying  there,  pulsating  with  life,  was  his  power 


116  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

of  living  incarnate  and  become  conscious,  his 
zest  for  life,  his  will  .  .  .  ;  himself  living  be- 
fore his  own  eyes.  .  .  .  Then  love  wrought 
its  miracle:  slowly,  gently,  surely,  the  little 
sleeping  thing  that  he  felt  to  be  himself  swept 
him  out  of  himself.  .  .  .  Slowly,  deliciously, 
he  felt  every  demarcation  between  himself  and 
her  being  obliterated.  .  .  .  Everything  in  him 
that  was  properly  or  solely  himself  was  blotted 
out,  blotted  out.  .  .  .  His  desire  for  knowl- 
edge that  had  brought  him  to  her  bedside, 
his  anxiety  for  the  child,  his  suffering  be- 
cause of  her  and  yet  exterior  to  her,  all  had 
left  him.  .  .  .  He  had  become  one  with  the 
little  sleeping  creature,  weak,  trustful,  sick. 
.  .  .  Now  it  was  she  who  suffered  in  him,  she 
who  in  him  pitied  her:  he  felt  with  her  and 
no  longer  because  of  her;  his  self-interest 
melted  away  in  love.  .  .  .  And  now  the 
miracle  was  fully  accomplished:  he  lived 
wholly  in  her.  .  .  .  But  at  the  same  time, 
strangely,  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  had  gained 
and  grown  in  ceasing  to  be  himself;  it  was  as 
though  his  consciousness  was  reaching  out, 


DOWNFALL  117 

reaching  out,  deliriously  expanding,  and  at 
the  same  time  finding  self-denial  in  this  ex- 
pansion and  extension;  the  more  fully  he  at- 
tained consciousness,  the  more  was  his  con- 
sciousness in  her.  .  .  .  And  he  never  wearied, 
could  not  conceive  of  wearying  of  this  melting 
into  her  soul.  .  .  .  He  blessed  her  for  sleep- 
ing so  that  he  could  cleave  to  her  undisturb- 
edly, unreasoningly,  boundlessly.  .  .  .  And 
he  stood  there,  bending  over  her,  tasting  to 
the  full  the  delight  of  this  merging  of  his 
entity  into  hers.  .  .  . 

He  stood  up  at  last  and  his  mind  was  as 
confused  as  a  drunken  man's.  What  was 
happening  to  him?  .  .  .  What!  He  had  come 
with  a  very  definite  object.  .  .  .  What  was 
this  intoxication  that  had  overcome  him  and 
still  possessed  him?  .  .  .  He  looked  round 
him  to  try  to  collect  himself,  to  find  his  bear- 
ings again.  .  .  .  Yes,  that  was  the  door 
there  .  .  . ,  the  passage  .  .  . ,  yonder  his  wife 
was  sleeping.  .  .  .  His  wife!  The  woman 
through  whom  he  had  begotten  his  child! 
.  .  .  The  woman  whom  he  had  impregnated 


118  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

with  his  being  .  .  .  who,  also,  she  too,  was 
himself!  .  .  .  And  once  more  he  was  intoxi- 
cated with  the  feeling  that  he  was  himself  in 
another  than  himself. 

Then  he  understood :  his  family  was  absorb- 
ing him;  the  entity  which  was  his  own  was 
stripping  him  of  the  identity  of  his  own 
being;  his  body  was  robbing  him  of  his  mind 
.  .  .  then  in  a  flash  he  saw  his  whole  life 
crumbling  away,  his  whole  being  confiscated 
by  love,  the  activity  of  his  intellect  rendered 
impossible,  all  the  ideas  seething  in  him  just 
left,  for  ever;  his  beloved  work  crushed  in  the 
embryo.  .  .  .  No.  That  should  not  be.  ... 
So  much  could  not  be  asked  of  him.  ...  If 
the  child  were  ill,  she  would  be  looked  after. 
He  would  do  all  that  was  necessary.  .  .  . 
Surely  his  whole  life,  his  happiness  were  not 
asked  of  him.  .  .  .  He  would  not  love  them. 
He  would  not.  He  would  not.  ...  So  on 
a  desperate  defensive  impulse,  which  instantly 
horrified  him,  he  ran  to  his  study,  back  to  his 
writings  and  his  ideas.  These  things  were  his 
life,  his  passion,  his  desire.  They  would  be 


DOWNFALL  119 

his  defence.  And  with  a  frenzy  that  terrified 
him,  for  he  knew  that  his  old  frenzy  was  a 
passion  which  was  slipping  away  from  him, 
he  plunged  into  his  papers.  .  .  . 

But  he  read  not  a  word.  .  .  .  He  had 
never  a  thought.  .  .  .  And  all  the  things  he 
had  written  down  seemed  to  him  to  be  dead 
things.  The  only  reality  was  yonder,  in  the 
child's  room.  .  .  .  And  already  he  found  the 
limitation  of  himself  in  himself,  which  he  had 
felt  on  reading  a  few  lines,  a  heavy  burden 
to  bear. 

Then  he  was  seized  with  a  feeling  of  dizzi- 
ness: there  was  no  doubt  about  it:  it  was  the 
ruin  of  his  intellect,  the  collapse  of  his  dreams, 
a  declension  into  the  most  violent,  the  richest, 
the  most  sorrowful  love.  .  .  .  Then,  as  be- 
fore, he  was  filled  with  a  desire  to  wear  out 
his  agitation  by  movement,  to  go  out,  to  run, 
to  go  walking  blindly  on  and  on.  ...  But 
now  he  was  compelled  to  stay,  to  stay  with 
those  whom  he  had  created,  for  whom  he  was 
responsible.  .  .  .  And,  in  his  heart  of  hearts, 
he  wished  to  stay.  He  wished  to  suffer  with 


120  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

them;  to  stay,  wounded  by  them,  near  those 
whom  he  had  wounded.  And,  sinking  back 
into  his  chair,  he  murmured  with  the  Master: 
"  I  am  crucified  to  the  world,  as  the  world  in 
me  is  crucified.  .  .  ." 

And  he  sat  there,  waiting  for  the  dawn, 
trying  to  think  that  it  was  all  an  evil  dream, 
that  to-morrow  he  would  be  told  that  all  was 
well,  that  he  would  come  back  to  himself; 
but,  even  so,  he  felt  convinced  that  he  would 
never  be  the  same  again,  that  he  would  love 
them,  that  he  wished  to  love  them,  that  he 
would  never  again  recover  the  distinct  sense 
of  demarcation  between  himself  and  them, 
which  only  a  few  hours  ago  he  had  had  as 
he  sat  at  his  desk.  .  .  .  And  he  looked  at  his 
papers — his  worshipful  effort  to  win  to  a 
clear  idea  of  his  being — which  in  one  night 
had  slipped  back  into  the  world  of  inanimate 
things.  .  .  .  What  then  was  this  passion  of 
his  for  the  idea?  What  was  this  "  passion  " 
which  the  mere  sight  of  the  lips  of  a  sleeping 
child  had  been  enough  to  dissipate?  .  .  . 
And  yet  this  passion  was  his,  it  was  the  first 


DOWNFALL  181 

condition  of  his  existence,  and  he  was  con- 
scious of  the  truth  of  his  distress  at  the 
thought  of  losing  it.  ... 

And  he  sat  there  with  bowed  head,  trem- 
bling in  his  impotence  to  understand  what  he 
was.  .  .  .  He  understood  then  those  who, 
under  the  stress  of  such  a  night  of  torment, 
fall  on  their  knees  before  Him  who  knows.  .  .  . 

* 
*       * 

Day  came.  He  hurried  to  the  doctor's. 
.  .  .  Hip-disease!  He  must  be  mad  to  think 
such  a  thing.  .  .  .  The  diagnosis  was  very 
simple.  .  .  .  They  would  have  told  him  the 
truth  at  once.  .  .  .  No,  no.  It  was  just  the 
exhaustion  of  a  child  who  has  grown  too 
fast.  .  .  . 

He  went  home.  They  were  at  breakfast. 
.  .  .  He  explained  his  lateness  as  best  he 
could  and  made  some  story  to  account  for  his 
going  out  so  early  and  sat  down  between 
them. 


122  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

.  .  .  He  was  filled  with  a  profoundly  new 
feeling  for  the  two  of  them.  As  he  looked 
at  the  little  creature  by  his  side,  eating,  drink- 
ing, talking,  thinking,  willing,  how  strangely 
he  felt  that  it  was  himself  living  there  by  his 
side ! .  .  .  Ah !  Often  and  often,  in  intellectual 
amusement,  he  had  said  to  himself  at  meals 
as  he  looked  at  her:  "Her  life  is  really  my 
life."  But  to-day  he  felt  it!  And  it  seemed 
to  him  that  no  father  could  feel  it  as  he  did. 
For  other  fathers  it  is  only  an  idea.  .  .  . 
And,  as  for  the  woman  sitting  opposite  him, 
he  was  filled  with  a  profound  feeling  this 
morning — a  feeling  such  as  he  had  never  had 
(except  perhaps  once,  when  she  was  preg- 
nant)— that  she  was  a  child  whom  he  had 
taken  away  from  her  own  people,  her  own 
home,  her  own  consciousness,  and  that  he  had 
penetrated  into  her  consciousness,  and  at  the 
same  time  had  been  interpenetrated  by  her. 
.  .  .  Oh!  He  had  not  been  wrong  that  night; 
no,  never  again  would  he  return  to  the  sense 
of  demarcation  between  himself  and  them 
that  he  had  had  yesterday,  never  again  would 


DOWNFALL  123 

he  win  back  to  the  independence  of  his  con- 
sciousness, or  the  purity  of  his  heart,  or  to 
the  clarity  of  the  heart  which  is  necessary  for 
the  intellect.  .  .  . 

He  spent  the  whole  of  the  afternoon  with 
Suzanne,  making  her  play,  and  telling  her 
stories.  .  .  .  Clemence  watched  him  in  amaze- 
ment. 

Next  day,  after  lunch,  he  went  into  his 
study,  intending  to  return  to  his  work.  .  .  . 
There  was  nothing  to  prevent  him.  .  .  . 
Come!  What  was  the  profound  meaning  of 
that  page  of  Descartes?  What  was  its  sig- 
nificance in  the  master's  scheme  of  thought 
at  that  particular  period  of  his  life?  .  .  .  He 
probed  into  it.  ...  Yes,  he  carefully  ex- 
amined it.  ...  As  before.  .  .  .  He  worked 
through  to  his  idea,  and  he  hugged  it  to  him. 
.  .  .  But  he  was  fully  aware  that  his  real 
power  of  absorption  and  intensive  concentra- 
tion was  no  longer  with  his  ideas,  but,  in  the 
next  room,  directed  upon  the  sofa  where  lay 
the  flesh  of  his  flesh,  the  blood  of  his  blood. 


THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

.  .  .  And  feverishly  he  paced  up  and  down 
and  round  his  room;  and  he  was  conscious  of 
the  fact  that  his  fever  was  not  the  fever  of 
thought,  but  the  fever  of  fear:  that  he  was 
clinging  to  his  love  for  his  work,  willing  him- 
self to  will  it,  forcing  himself  to  attach  an 
importance  to  the  idea  shaping  in  his  mind, 
and  that  now  the  smallest  trifle  was  enough 
to  distract  him  from  it  all.  .  .  .  And  yet 
there  was  a  profound  something,  very  pro- 
found, but  profound  in  a  different  way  from 
his  judgment,  which  bound  him  to  his  work. 
"Ah!"  he  wept  in  his  heart,  "It  is  too 
frightful,  too  appalling,  in  the  full  tide  of  life 
to  be  dispossessed  of  faith." 

.  .  .  He  read  the  poem  of  an  old  writer: 
how,  according  to  his  school  of  thought,  the 
world  was  made,  the  birth  of  the  world,  the 
grandeur  of  the  sun,  the  movement  of  the 
stars,  planets,  and  animals.  .  .  .  And  from 
that  he  passed  to  the  thought  of  the  suffering 
of  the  child.  And,  tremblingly,  he  felt  that 


DOWNFALL  125 

out  of  that  had  just  welled  his  real  power 
of  interest.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  That  day  several  little  friends  had 
come  to  play  with  Suzanne  and  they  had  all 
romped  about.  Then  came  the  time  for  Su- 
zanne to  lie  down.  She  had  been  stopped  at 
the  most  thrilling  moment  of  the  game,  and 
the  rest  cruelly  went  on  playing.  And  she 
looked  at  them  with  sad  wisdom  in  her  eyes. 
.  .  .  Oh!  How  entirely  he  was  filled  with 
love,  with  the  fierce  joy  of  sharing,  with  a 
sudden  added  sense  of  being  swept  out  of 
himself,  with  a  feeling  of  the  impotence  of 
the  mind!  . 


* 

# 


The  disease  gained  ground.  The  doctors 
held  a  long  consultation.  .  .  .  Men  came  with 
bands  and  cords  and  plaster  to  imprison  the 
child's  limbs  in  a  monstrous  sheath,  while,  in 
agony,  horribly  gay,  her  parents  amused  her 
and  deceived  her — "  It  is  only  for  a  few  days. 


126  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

Suzanne  shall  play  again  on  Sunday  " — and 
she  looked  up  at  them  with  her  eyes  wide  in 
surprise  and  confidence.  .  .  .  And  the  men 
went  away.  And  she  was  left  there,  crucified, 
resigned,  terribly  human.  .  .  . 

Then,  rudely,  violently  torn  away  from 
his  ideas,  the  unhappy  man  felt  himself  re- 
lapsing into  the  blindest,  the  most  desperate 
love,  the  most  utter  devotion,  the  completest 
absorption  of  the  heart  that  he  had  ever 
known.  What  was  the  fusion  of  himself  with 
a  suffering  creature  that  he  had  known  years 
ago  and  taken  for  a  tremendous  thing  com- 
pared now  with  this  fusion  of  himself  with 
a  creature  who  was  his  very  being,  blood  of 
his  blood,  his  will  become  flesh  and  suffering! 
Now  it  was  through  his  inmost  being,  through 
the  extension  of  his  own  nature,  and  not 
through  any  outward  cause,  that  his  soul  had 
become  one  with  the  soul  of  another;  it  was 
the  profoundest  depths  of  himself,  his  utter- 
most self,  that  now  projected  him  outside 
himself,  bound  him  to  another  human  being, 


DOWNFALL  127 

with  the  most  marvellously  perfect  adjust- 
ment, the  most  wonderful  adhesive  power,  the 
most  complete  alienation  from  himself!  Ah! 
He  knew  now  what  it  was  to  become  one 
with  another  soul,  with  its  most  secret  places, 
where  almost  it  were  impossible  to  believe 
that  another  soul  could  penetrate,  and  wholly 
to  lose  consciousness  of  self,  the  ultimate 
self,  which  marks  the  ultimate  cleavage 
between  one  entity  and  another.  .  .  .  And 
now  everything  was  crumbling,  crumbling 
away:  all  his  mental  activity,  all  his  power 
of  taking  and  understanding.  And  he  strug- 
gled: he  tried  to  raise  himself  above  this 
mighty  sea  of  love,  once  more  to  hug  to  him- 
self his  beloved  power  of  thought:  twenty 
times  a  day  he  would  go  into  his  study  and 
fling  himself  into  his  ideas — for  he  had,  had 
he  not?,  still  the  right  to  desire  his  own  life, 
his  own  happiness!  Surely  he  had  not  to 
give  everything! — And  twenty  times  his  ideas 
would  elude  him,  like  a  piece  of  wreckage 
slipping  away  from  his  frozen  fingers.  And 
from  his  violent  resistance,  in  despair  at  his 


128  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

impotence,  he  would  sink  back  into  the  ful- 
ness of  his  love. 


And  he  detested  his  love.  He  found  in  it 
the  things  he  most  detested:  the  love  of  "  hu- 
man suffering,"  the  love  of  "  sensibility,"  the 
love  of  the  flesh  in  travail.  .  .  .  And  this  love 
was  the  love  of  Ms  flesh.  .  .  .  And  all  the 
love  of  man,  and  all  man's  "charity,"  and 
all  that  man  sanctifies,  were  the  love  of  his 
flesh  .  .  .  the  love  of  his  "  kin  and  kind." 
.  .  .  Ah!  How  subtle,  how  eternal  is  that 
religion  which  bids  man  seek  his  divinity  in 
the  adulation  of  his  own  suffering  flesh  upon 
the  cross. 

For  that  is  what  this  Christian  religion 
amounts  to:  it  is  Man's  worship  of  his  own 
suffering  flesh.  ...  It  is  because  it  is  that 
that  it  has  conquered  the  world  and  become 
universal.  .  .  .  And  indeed  there  are  men 
who  have  proclaimed  Christ  to  be  the  great- 
est of  "  thinkers  "  x  and  declare  that  he  would 

1 "  Christum  ait  fuisse  summum  philosophum."    (Tschirnhaus, 
on  Spinoza.) 


DOWNFALL  129 

have  been  just  as  great  without  his  crucifix- 
ion, and  that  he  should  be  loved  not  only  on 
Gerazim  or  Golgotha  but  in  mind  and  truth. 
What  men  are  these?  Philosophers,  learned 
men,  "  semi-Christians,"  who  have  no  weight 
with  the  people  or  are  ignored  by  them.  .  .  . 
But  "  Pascal  in  sickness  showing  his  sensi- 
bility of  the  physical  sufferings  of  Jesus  "  is 
the  true  Christian,  and  all  men  cross  them- 
selves in  him. 

And  his  was  the  love  of  his  flesh  wounded. 
Oh!  Could  he  hate  the  love  of  the  One  who 
suffered,  the  One  who  was  buried  and 
wounded,  enough!  Does  not  suffering  mean 
feeling,  compassion,  feeling  with  another? 
Why  should  we  always  "  feel  sorrow "?  By 
what  blasphemy,  by  what  base  reduction  of 
life  to  the  level  of  your  wretchedness  have  you 
decided  that  human  means  suffering?  And 
you  who  are  "compassionate,"  you  who 
"  commune "  with  your  God,  why  must  it 
always  be  communion  in  His  sorrow?  Why 
is  there  no  communion  in  His  smile,  when  He 


130  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

was  at  Magdala,  happy  and  simple  in  the 
company  of  the  two  young  women?  Why 
and  through  what  sadism — I  do  not  only  mean 
you,  the  dreadful  modern  comedians,  the  ex- 
ploiters of  the  quivering  flesh,  those  who 
parade  Sebastian  and  Amfortas,  but  you  too, 
the  stern  doctors  of  the  ages  of  restraint:  "  O 
blood  that  flowest  from  the  pierced  head,  or 
from  the  galled  eyes,  or  from  the  body  bruised 
and  broken!  O  precious  blood,  let  me  gather 
thee  drop  by  drop  ..." x — through  what 
sadism  do  you  commune  with  the  One  who 
was  broken  and  destroyed?  .  .  .  And  he  too, 
like  all  the  rest,  was  a  party  to  such  sadism. 
Had  he  been  one  with  his  child  when  she  was 
happy  and  playing  about  in  the  gardens? 
Had  he  even  felt  that  he  was  kin  with  her 
in  those  days?  Was  it  not  also,  in  his  case, 
the  suffering  human  being  that  had  called 
forth  his  pity?  .  .  .  With  bowed  head  he 
thought:  "  Will  ever  a  man  be  human  enough 
wholly,  in  compassion,  to  share  in  happi- 
ness? " 

1  Bossuet. 


DOWNFALL  131 

And  his  was  the  love  of  a  human  being 
hurt  and  laid  low  by  himself.  For  he  was 
beginning  to  discover  hideous  feelings  in 
himself:  a  delight  in  her  suffering  because  it 
was  his  work,  because  it  was  the  proof  of  his 
power  to  create  suffering.  .  .  .  The  horrible 
love  of  man  for  his  power  of  cruelty.  .  .  . 

And  suddenly  he  perceived  the  meaning  of 
Christianity:  the  love  of  men  for  Him  who 
had  suffered  not  for  them,  but  through  them, 
who  would  never  have  suffered  if  they  had 
not  sinned.  .  .  . 

And  love  beset  him  on  all  sides:  now,  be- 
neath states  of  soul  which  he  thought 
"  reasonable "  he  would  suddenly  recognise 
it;  now,  at  the  most  unexpected  places,  new 
forms  of  love  would  spring  up  and  close  in 
upon  him  like  furies. 

Sometimes  in  his  desire  to  feel  himself 
alone,  he  would  go  as  far  as  to  visit  the  re- 
sponsibility of  her  illness  upon  the  child  her- 


132  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

self.  It  was  madness  to  believe  that  he  had 
done  everything:  the  creation  of  a  human 
being  by  itself  without  any  reference  to  its 
ascendants — "autogenesis" — did  exist!  So 
much  the  worse  for  her  if  she  had  played 
her  part  in  the  creation  of  herself  badly.  .  .  . 
And  at  once — in  addition  to  his  horror  of 
the  solitude  to  which  he  was  abandoning  the 
little  creature — he  would  become  conscious 
of  regret  for  the  share  in  her  creation  which 
he  had  just  granted  her,  of  grudging  her  the 
smallest  independence,  of  wishing  her  to  be 
only,  wholly  and  solely,  himself.  .  .  .  And, 
in  terror,  he  would  see  that  his  "  responsi- 
bility "  came  not  from  his  "  reason  "  or  his 
"  morality "  but  from  the  most  organic  ele- 
ment of  his  being,  from  the  instinctive  desire 
to  create,  from  some  obscure  and  unknown 
need  of  carnal  interest.  .  .  .  And  he  would 
be  overwhelmed  by  the  consciousness  of  a 
profound  tie  that  bound  him. 

And,  at  such  moments,  he  would  not  share 
his  interest  even  with  Clemence.  He  told 
himself  that  the  father  was  the  only  begetter 


DOWNFALL  133 

and  parent,  that  the  man  alone  was  respon- 
sible. .  .  .  Ah!  The  wiseacres  who  declared 
that,  if  Eve  alone  had  sinned,  the  human  race 
would  never  have  fallen,  had  seen  deep  into 
the  human  heart. 

And  he  understood  now  the  meaning  of  the 
desire  for  responsibility,  the  desire  to  reach 
consciousness  remotely,  entirely  remote  from 
self;  and  that  the  great  responsible  men  are 
the  men  of  power,  of  will,  of  force  and  action. 
.  .  .  Those  who  live  by  weakness,  women  and 
children,  have  no  desire  for  responsibility. 

At  other  times,  when  he  had  once  more  be- 
come "  reasonable,"  he  would  blame  Cle- 
mence.  The  mother's  nature  also  played  its 
part  in  the  shaping  of  the  child!  (And  who 
knows  whether  among  her  kindred,  whatever 
they  may  say,  there  may  not  be  some  taint  or 
other?)  .  .  .  And  it  was  she  who  had  made 
the  child:  he  remembered  that  now:  it  was 
her  woman's  passion,  it  was  she.  .  .  .  No,  no. 

It  was  he,  it  was  he 

And  suddenly,  as  he  looked  at  the  child,  he 


134-  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

knew  that  it  was  neither  she  nor  he,  but  their 
indivisible  bond,  the  mysterious  union  in 
which  their  separate  individualities  and  wills 
were  merged.  .  .  .  Then  in  a  flash  he  began 
to  understand  why  this  mystery  was  made 
holy,  and  marriage  a  sacrament;  he  under- 
stood how  and  why  it  is  monstrous  for  two 
wills  which  have  created  another  being,  the 
living  symbol  of  their  perfect  conjunction, 
afterwards  to  be  so  bold  as  to  declare  them- 
selves sundered,  strangers  to  one  another, 
divorced  from  one  another.  .  .  .  And  it 
seemed  to  him  that  yet  another  mystic  bond, 
heightened  by  the  splendour  which  men  con- 
fer on  it,  a  splendour  which  he  had  just  begun 
to  feel,  had  taken  possession  of  his  heart.  .  .  . 
He  thought  of  the  millions  of  human  beings 
who  recite  these  dogmas.  .  .  .  Their  lives 
would  become  impossible  if  they  began  to  feel 
them.  .  .  . 

And  yet  again  he  would  sink  back  reso- 
lutely and  utterly  into  consciousness  of  the 
evil  he  had  done  as  though  he  wished  to  drain 


DOWNFALL  135 

it  of  its  bitterness.  As  with  a  dagger  he 
stabbed  himself  with  this  truth :  "  My  will 
has  produced  this  suffering  creature.  ...  It 
is  false  to  say:  I  willed  the  existence  of  this 
creature.  And  afterwards  it  came  to  suffer- 
ing. Rather  must  I  say:  At  the  moment 
when  I  willed  her  existence,  through  the  fact 
of  my  willing  it,  she  suffered.  .  .  .  My  will, 
being  this  poor  little  creature,  was  a  suffering 
thing.  ...  I  was,  I  am,  suffering  in  her.  ..." 
So,  in  a  roundabout  way,  he  came  back  to 
the  idea  of  communion;  once  more  his  re- 
sponsibility was  turned  into  love.  .  .  .  And 
he  regretted  his  first  feelings  which  did  at 
least  give  him  the  right  to  believe  in  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  liberty.  .  .  . 

He  would  look  down  at  the  little  creature 
who  was  revealing  to  him  his  own  suffering. 
...  It  would  seem  to  him  that  the  Father 
adored  the  Son  for  having  discovered  for 
Him  His  own  humanity.  .  .  . 

And  yet,  how  bitterly,  beneath  such  com- 
munion, did  he  feel  the  implacable  independ- 


136  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

ence  of  human  creatures,  and  how  impotent 
is  a  man  to  do  anything  for  that  other  crea- 
ture which  is  himself,  which  must  yet  work  out 
its  own  salvation!  .  .  .  How  the  doctors  hurt 
him  merely  by  saying:  "  She  will  pull 
through"! 

And  at  other  times  his  "  common  sense  " 
would  intervene  and  declare  that  it  was  all 
literature,  all  metaphor,  to  talk  about  one 
consciousness  merged  with  another  and  say- 
ing: "I  am  ill  in  your  lungs"!  .  .  .  Could 
anything  be  more  personal  than  consciousness  ? 
He  was  himself,  alone.  A  being  had  issued 
from  him  which  was  another  entity,  entirely 
separate  from  himself.  .  .  .  But  it  was  enough 
for  him  to  give  one  glance  at  his  child  to 
know  in  his  heart  that  he  was  both  himself 
and  she.  .  .  .  He  would  ponder  long  this 
state  of  his  heart:  to  be  both  himself  and  not 
himself!  .  .  .  Then,  fully,  clearly,  he  would 
admit  the  frightful  law  of  love:  its  frightful 
contradiction.  Its  frightful  contradiction — 
the  Idea's  worst  enemy; — he  detested  it  and 


DOWNFALL  137 

seeing  all  men  grovelling  under  it  with  their 
patheticism,  their  outpouring  of  emotion,  their 
"  musicality  " ;  and  it  was  there,  firmly  seated 
in  himself,  and  he  could  feel  it,  while  all  the 
rest  were  gushing  about  it,  all  the  professors 
of  a  Pascalian  ecstasy,  wretched  scribblers, 
glued  to  their  desks,  thinking  of  nothing  but 
their  fame,  while,  never  having  loved  any  one, 
they  had  preserved  their  identity  intact.  .  .  . 
And  he  would  think  of  the  "Effect  which  is 
only  a  form  of  the  Cause,"  and  he  would 
think  of  the  Father  "  consubstantial "  with 
the  Son,  of  the  three  Persons  who  are  but  one 
Person,  of  all  the  things  which  are  them- 
selves and  something  other  than  themselves, 
to  the  eternal  perplexity  of  men.  And  all 
their  "  follies "  seemed  to  him  to  be  very 
serious  things.  And  the  councils  which  de- 
bated them  seemed  to  him  to  be  sublime.  .  .  . 
And  he  was  entirely  submerged  by  contra- 
diction, now  swollen  with  his  past  and  the 
religion  he  had  come  by  through  it.  ... 

And  then,  lost  in  this  absolute  contradic- 


138  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

tion,  this  perfect  dislocation  from  himself,  he 
was  entirely  deserted  by  his  power  of  thought. 
.  .  .  Indeed  it  was  still  possible  for  him  to 
observe,  to  read,  to  deduct ;  to  approach  ideas, 
to  come  in  contact  with  their  external  form, 
to  follow  all  the  miserable  processes  which 
are  called  Intelligence,  by  way  of  crushing 
them.  .  .  .  But  the  real  power  of  thought, 
the  possession  of  the  Idea,  the  occupation  of 
it,  the  penetration  to  its  inmost,  the  erethis- 
mus  of  the  mind  which  men  pretend  to  con- 
fuse with  the  emotion  of  the  heart,  and  the 
quickened  idea,  the  abstract  made  flesh  (men 
believe  that  the  abstract  is  a  dead  thing!), 
and  the  "  grip  "  of  which  he  was  so  proud, 
the  fierce  tension  of  the  mind  in  its  grasp  of 
an  idea,  in  holding  it  against  the  hundred 
ideas  which  would  gather  round  it  and  try  to 
beat  him  back,  all  these  cherished  powers  of 
his  were  now  for  ever  lost  and  submerged 
in  the  action  of  his  heart.  .  .  .  And  he  saw 
them  sinking.  .  .  .  And  he  knew  how  low 
he  had  fallen.  Oh!  He  had  so  often  in 
others  girded  at  such  impotence  to  grasp  an 


DOWNFALL  139 

idea,  such  disparities  of  mind,  such  cow- 
ardice of  thought,  as  were  now  his!  ...  And 
the  "  liberal "  style,  as  he  had  called  it  in  his 
contempt,  the  style  which  leaves  room  for 
what  it  does  not  mean,  the  style  which  does 
not  absolutely  convey  the  thought  behind  it, 
would  now  be  his  if  he  were  not  too  ashamed 
to  write.  .  .  . 

And  in  his  growing  impotence,  in  face  of 
the  increasingly  certain  collapse  of  his  work, 
overwhelmed  with  sorrow  like  the  man  who 
thought  himself  abandoned  by  his  God — as 
he  would  have  been  if  he  had  really  believed — 
he  cried  aloud  to  the  God  whom  he  loved: 
"  Why  hast  thou  deserted  me!  "  .  .  . 

But  he  knew  that  he  deserved  such  deser- 
tion, that  he  had  committed  a  crime,  that  he 
was  doomed.  And,  shuddering  at  his  punish- 
ment, he  took  to  heart  the  words  of  Science 
to  the  man  who  was  damned  and  wept: 
'With  the  first  dart  thou  shouldest  raise 

thy  eyes  towards  me,  and  not  droop  thy  wings 

10 


140  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

and  go  out  to  meet  the  blows  of  some  little 
girl  or  any  other  such  small  thing." 

And,  gazing  back  at  the  Eden  which  he 
was  losing  through  his  heart,  he  sighed: 
"Who  shall  deliver  us  from  charity  1" 


* 
* 


.  .  .  He  thought  of  the  woman  whom  he 
had  made  to  suffer  in  his  youth,  the  woman 
whom  he  had  loved  so  much.  .  .  .  He  ven- 
tured to  write  to  her.  On  several  evenings  he 
wandered  round  her  house  .  .  .  : 

"Madeleine.  .  .  .  Forgive  me!  ...  I 
wanted  to  see  you  again.  .  .  .  Only  for  a 
moment.  ...  I  am  very  unhappy.  .  .  .  My 
child  is  ill.  ...  I  understand  now  all  the 
suffering  I  caused  you.  .  .  .  How  is  your  boy, 
Pierre?  .  .  ." 

She  listened,  silent  and  reserved.  .  .  .  She 
remembered  the  crumbling  away  of  the  dream 
she  had  made  with  him,  and  in  the  bitterness 

1  Dante,  Purgatorio,  zxzi.  55. 


DOWNFALL  14?1 

of  her  heart  there  was  no  room  for  pity  for 
others.  .  .  .  She  said  a  few  commonplace 
words,  broke  off  their  conversation,  and  al- 
most lightly  walked  back  towards  her  home, 
which  at  least  had  not  betrayed  her.  .  .  . 


They  went  to  Berck.  He  marked  the 
child's  distress  when  she  found  that  there 
existed  a  whole  world  of  little  people  like 
herself  all  strapped  down  to  their  carriages; 
and  how,  suddenly,  her  disease  became  a 
solemn  thing  to  her,  and  how  horribly  con- 
scious she  became  of  being  subject  to  a  defi- 
nite disease,  and  the  object  of  so  many  words, 
so  many  consultations,  an  illness  so  frequent 
that  a  place  had  been  consecrated  to  it,  and 
so  serious  that  her  parents  had  to  leave  their 
affairs  for  a  long  time  .  .  .  ;  and  her  realisa- 
tion, horrible  to  see,  that  she  was  now  more 
firmly  strapped  to  her  bed,  and  her  new 
expression,  as  of  her  inmost  soul  gazing 
through  at  them.  .  .  .  And  in  face  of  this 
renewed  crucifixion  he  suffered  a  wild  acces- 


THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

sion  of  love,  of  removal  from  himself,  an  orgy 
of  communion.  .  .  . 

And  in  that  perfect  unity,  through  its  very 
perfection,  he  tried  to  liberate  himself.  .  .  . 
He  had  the  right  to  despise  what  he  felt  to  be 
himself,  his  own  flesh  and  its  mutilation! 
He  had  the  right  to  dispose  of  himself!  .  .  . 
But  at  once  the  image  of  the  child  would 
arise  before  him,  separate  from  him,  with  a 
soul  of  her  own,  lacerated  and  broken  by 
such  desertion.  .  .  .  Ah,  yes!  She  ceases  to 
be  herself  if  I  think  of  her  in  myself,  but  she 
becomes  herself  again  when  I  try  to  dispose 
of  myself.  .  .  .  We  are  one,  but  we  are 
two.  .  .  . 

And  once  more  the  unhappy  wretch  who 
desired  nothing  but  a  clear  idea,  would  sink 
back  into  the  absolute  contradiction,  of  which 
he  had  the  most  horribly  clear  idea. 

And  there  was  much  more  to  torture  him! 
The  complaisance  of  these  people  in  the 
things  he  detested,  the  things  which  dragged 


DOWNFALL  143 

him  down.  .  .  .  Their  complacent  acceptance 
of  suffering.  .  .  .  The  litters  put  side  by 
side — the  little  cripples  laughing  and  playing 
together — and  their  parents  reading  gently 
the  while,  or  sewing,  or  drinking  tea  or  play- 
ing cards.  .  .  .  Their  acceptance  of  misfor- 
tune. .  .  .  Their  acquiescence  in  degradation. 
.  .  .  Acquiescence,  do  I  say?  .  .  .  Their 
pride.  .  .  .  Their  feeling  of  being  a  cor- 
porate entity,  of  being  humanity,  "  moral " 
humanity,  the  only  kind  of  humanity  deserv- 
ing of  interest!  Their  silent  contempt  for 
healthy  humanity,  for  those  whose  children 
thrive  and  go  and  make  holiday  happily  by 
the  sea!  .  .  .  The  arrogance  of  unhappiness. 
.  .  .  And  their  comfortable  delight  in  living 
only  through  the  heart:  their  hatred  of  those 
who  keep  to  themselves,  their  hatred  of  those 
who  think.  .  .  .  Their  pretension  that  the 
loftiest  thoughts  are  not  the  equal  of  the  love 
which  they  expend  on  their  children.  .  .  . 
And  their  familiarity  with  himself,  their  be- 
lief that  he  was  like  themselves. 

They  were  symbolical  to  him  of  the  mod- 


144  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

ern  world,  of  what  the  world  has  been  for 
two  thousand  years.  .  .  .  The  religion  of  the 
heart,  of  sentiment,  of  tears.  .  .  .  The  pyre 
of  the  Idea.  ...  Of  course!  A  moral  at- 
mosphere entirely  created  by  women!  Ah! 
How  great  was  the  ancient  agony :  "  Away 
with  women,"  He  said  to  His  disciples.  And 
then  when  they  burst  into  tears :  "  It  is  not 
worth  while  getting  rid  of  women  to  avoid 
these  inconveniences.  .  .  ."  And  to  think  of 
the  modern  agony:  women  at  the  foot  of  a 
cross!  .  .  .  Women.  .  .  .  Women  everywhere. 
.  .  .  All  the  ordering  of  the  soul  left  to 
women.  And  then  the  heart,  the  heart,  al- 
ways and  everywhere  the  heart.  Art  turned 
to  "  sentiment."  Justice  turned  to  "  love." 
Morality  turned  to  "  kindness."  ...  So  that, 
if  a  man  were  alone  in  the  world,  he  could 
not  be  moral.  .  .  .  This  thing  reaches  even 
unto  God,  who  is  a  heart,  for  their  Jesus 
Christ  comes  from  the  heart  of  God,  from 
the  heart  of  His  Father;  only  with  the  great 
pagans  do  the  children  of  the  Gods  arise  from 
their  father's  brain!  . 


DOWNFALL  145 

And  now,  in  this  new  accession  of  love,  in 
the  renewed  exactions  of  his  heart,  even  a 
superficial  grasp  of  ideas  became  impossible 
for  him,  and  the  last  remaining  powers  of 
his  mind  surrendered.  Like  a  father  in  de- 
spair hugging  to  his  breast  a  slowly  dying 
child  whom  he  adores,  and  covering  it  with 
mad  kisses,  he  would  for  hours  together  wan- 
der about  the  dunes,  fiercely  clinging  to  the 
idea  of  the  old  life  which  had  been  his  joy 
and  his  pride,  and  was  now  vanishing  for 
ever.  .  .  .  Oh!  The  days  spent  wholly  in  de- 
velopment: the  joy  of  being  conscious  of  see- 
ing clearly,  of  seeing  more  and  more  clearly, 
of  making  everything  distinct  and  ordered, 
of  God-like  calling  forth  light  out  of  dark- 
ness, and  order  out  of  chaos;  and  of  under- 
standing the  disturbance  of  the  heart,  which 
others  are  content  to  feel — and  their  anger  at 
being  understood,  and  their  denials :  "  The 
heart  has  its  reasons  "...  as  if  it  were  im- 
possible to  know  them! — ;  the  joy  in  such 
consciousness  of  slowly,  surely,  breaking 
away  from  other  men  and  creating  another 


146  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

species.  .  .  .  All  that  was  gone  from  him 
for  ever!  .  .  .  And,  instead  of  it,  he  had  only 
love,  the  adoration  of  his  own  flesh,  the  de- 
bauch of  his  own  heart.  .  .  .  Love,  to  which 
all  men  may  come.  .  .  .  Love,  in  which  the 
basest  are  the  most  apt  .  .  .  with  their  dread- 
ful sophistry  in  assuring  us  that  love  is  light, 
that  love  is  developement.  .  .  .  That  love  has 
led  to  the  creation  of  the  greatest  works!  As 
if  it  were  not  the  truth  that  those  who  created 
them  did  so  when  they  had  passed  beyond 
love,  and  had  won  back  to  mastery  of  them- 
selves in  order  to  reflect  upon  their  love.  As 
if  love,  by  itself,  had  ever  discovered  any- 
thing! .  .  .  And  they  say  that  love  purifies! 
That  love  uplifts!  As  if  it  did  not  uplift 
exactly  in  proportion  as  it  ceases  to  be  love 
and  is  tinged  with  ideas.  .  .  .  Love,  by  which 
I  live  without  understanding  my  life.  .  .  . 
Love,  which  ceases  to  be  love  as  soon  as  it 
attains  self-knowledge  and  self -judgment. 
.  .  .  Love,  which  brings  us  back  to  "  tend- 
ency," to  blind  will,  to  the  "  vital  impulse." 
.  .  .  Love,  which  drags  us  down  to  the  level 


DOWNFALL  147 

of  the  beasts.  .  .  .  Love,  which  degrades  us. 
.  .  .  And  it  is  all  very  fine  for  me  to  hurl 
insults  at  love,  since  even  as  I  do  so  I  sink 
deeper  into  it  than  ever,  since,  no  sooner  do 
I  know  that  my  child  is  awake  than  breath- 
lessly I  hasten  to  her  bed,  to  catch  and  absorb 
her  first  thought.  .  .  .  Are  you  satisfied,  ye 
brutish  lovers?  For  I  know  your  malicious 
delight,  I  know  your  abominable  sniggering. 
— "He  is  not  so  bad  as  all  that.  .  .  .  He  is 
no  different  from  the  rest.  .  .  .  At  heart  he 
is  a  sentimentalist  .  .  ." — whenever  Intelli- 
gence falls  headlong  into  the  mire  in  which 
you  are  all  wallowing.  .  .  . 

And  he  would  rush  back  to  the  house, 
drunk  with  love,  and  hate,  and  despair  at  his 
downfall.  .  .  . 

* 

*       * 

And  there  lay  in  wait  for  him  aggravations 
of  love  which  he  had  not  foreseen  and  which 
grew  greater  every  day;  from  day  to  day  the 


148  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

child  became  more  human,  more  purely  a  soul, 
passing  beyond  mere  feeling  and  rising  to 
moral  suffering:  and  the  more  the  little  crea- 
ture became  a  human  creature,  the  more  pro- 
foundly she  would  touch  his  heart,  and  the 
more  strongly  she  would  draw  him  to  herself. 
.  .  .  But  how  he  wept  over  her  precocious 
humanity!  .  .  . 

.  .  .  They  were  in  the  garden.  The  sun 
was  sinking  over  the  still  sea  and  night  was 
slowly  veiling  the  earth  as  with  a  shroud  of 
darkness.  In  the  distance  they  could  hear  the 
faint  sound  of  the  waves  heaving  gently  up 
and  dying  at  the  foot  of  the  dunes,  as  though 
they  were  worn  out  by  the  heat  of  the  day. 
On  the  road  the  cattle  were  being  driven 
home,  wearied  by  the  long  heat,  longing  for 
shade  and  rest.  .  .  .  Everything  was  droop- 
ing and  faint,  overcome:  sounds,  scents,  col- 
ours. .  .  .  Ah!  How  she  sank  into  the  death 
of  the  day,  the  abjuration  of  things.  .  .  . 
How  keenly  she  felt  the  languor  of  nature, 
which  she  at  least  did  not  put  to  shame.  .  .  . 


DOWNFALL  149 

How  clear  it  was  to  see  that  her  eyes,  gazing 
into  space,  ignored  the  amusement  of  form, 
and  went  straight,  searchingly,  to  meet  the 
soul  of  things.  .  .  .  And,  how  mightily,  as 
he  sat  by  her  side  there  in  the  shadow,  how 
mightily,  with  what  utter  oblation,  what  vo- 
tive purity,  he  was  wedded  to  her  soul,  a 
soul  of  such  solemn  serenity.  .  .  . 

One  evening  Clemence  had  gone  to  the 
piano.  The  litter  had  been  brought  up  and  the 
child  was  listening  in  her  father's  arms.  .  .  . 
Clemence  went  through  a  few  romantic  pieces, 
and  then  she  opened  a  volume  of  Beethoven 
and  began  the  largo  of  the  Fourth  Sonata.  .  .  . 
Felix  gazed  at  the  child.  How  solemnly  she 
listened!  How  indifferent  she  was  to  the 
movement  of  the  fingers,  the  working  of 
the  hands,  to  the  obvious  things,  the  sudden 
flashes  and  decorative  passages!  She  was 
entirely  indifferent  to  the  sound,  and  wholly 
absorbed  in  the  soul  which  they  expressed! 
And,  during  the  great  passages  which  demand 
the  closest  attention  from  many  grown  men 


150  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

and  women,  her  heart  would  follow  as  though 
it  desired  to  grasp  their  full  achievement; 
their  profoundest  development,  their  final  at- 
tainment of  peace.  .  .  .  And  now  Clemence 
reached  a  sort  of  exaltation;  she  played  by 
heart  with  consummate  expression.  .  .  .  The 
child's  eyes  saw  nothing  now;  she  did  not 
even  hear  the  notes  and  chords,  but  was  ter- 
ribly absorbed,  as  though  she  had  reached  out 
to  meet  the  soul  which  had  created  the  music 
to  tell  the  sorrow  of  mutilation  and  laceration. 
.  .  .  Then,  through  the  broken  rhythms,  the 
breathlessness,  the  interrogations,  the  changes 
of  key,  which  might  have  distracted  and  dis- 
turbed her,  he  saw  her  following  the  soul  of 
the  music  and  with  a  tear  melting  into  its 
ultimate  feeling:  consolation  through  the  in- 
ward life.  .  .  .  Then,  as  he  bent  over  her,  he 
cleaved  to  her  soul,  so  tragically  human,  in 
an  agony  of  hunger  for  something  he  had 
never  yet  known.  .  .  . 


* 

* 


DOWNFALL  151 

The  child  had  been  lying  for  nearly  a  year 
so  bound  and  shackled.  .  .  .  Came  a  day 
when  the  doctors  were  to  come  to  see  if  they 
could  release  her.  .  .  .  They  removed  her 
bonds,  made  her  stand  up  and  walk.  Stand- 
ing side  by  side  her  father  and  mother 
watched  the  expression  on  the  doctors'  faces. 
The  servants  did  not  leave  the  room.  .  .  . 
Very  seriously  the  doctors  examined  the  child, 
and  all  those  present  trembled  lest  they 
should  not  yet  be  able  to  consent  to  the  child's 
release.  .  .  .  The  doctors  exchanged  a  few 
whispered  words.  .  .  .  Felix  understood;  all 
was  lost.  ..."  Still  a  little  patience."  .  .  . 
Horrible  words  of  encouragement.  .  .  .  The 
child  was  laid  on  the  bed  again.  .  .  .  There 
was  silence. 

They  had  dinner.  .  .  .  They  tried  to  main- 
tain their  usual  demeanour.  .  .  . 

He  let  Clemence  go  to  bed  and  then  went 
into  his  study.  .  .  .  For  some  time  he  kept 
control  of  himself:  he  read  and  wrote.  .  .  . 
He  walked  about  the  room  clutching  at  the 


152  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

semblance  of  hope.  .  .  .  Then  he  thought 
that  he  was  alone,  that  everybody  was  asleep, 
that  he  was  free  .  .  .  ;  then,  sinking  into  his 
chair,  he  laid  his  arms  on  the  table  and  hid 
his  face  in  them,  and  let  loose  the  flood  of  his 
mighty  grief.  .  .  .  He  wept  in  the  despair 
of  his  love,  and  through  his  tears  he  mur- 
mured :  "  Poor  little  Suzanne,  poor  little  Su- 
zanne. .  .  ."  And  his  grief  was  heightened 
by  being  given  rein.  .  .  .  He  wept  and 
wept.  .  .  . 

Suddenly  he  shivered:  a  hand  was  laid  on 
his  shoulder.  He  raised  his  head.  It  was 
Clemence.  .  .  .  She  was  standing  by  his  side 
in  her  white  dressing-gown,  gazing  into  his 
eyes  with  a  long  pleading  look,  infinitely  pro- 
found, and  big  with  reproach  and  love  and  the 
desire  to  bring  consolation.  .  .  . 

"  Felix,"  she  said  softly,  restraining  her 
emotion,  "  why  don't  you  tell  me  of  your 
suffering?  .  .  .  Your  grief  is  breaking  my 
heart.  ...  I  feel  that  I  could  ease  and 
assuage  it  for  you.  .  .  ." 

He  bowed  his  head,  and  gulped  for  breath, 


DOWNFALL  153 

and  avoided  her  eyes,  like  a  beast  at  bay.  .  .  . 
He  was  consternated  by  her  presence  there: 
not  once  during  the  eleven  years  of  their  life 
together  under  the  same  roof,  had  she  vio- 
lated his  nightly  retreat  where  she  knew  that 
he  withdrew  into  himself.  Not  one  night 
had  she  come.  And  there  she  stood!  .  .  . 
And  it  was  she,  she  whom  for  eleven  years  he 
had  kept  at  a  distance,  whom  he  had  harshly 
repelled  one  day  when  she  had  come  to  him 
in  a  burst  of  confidence — surely  she  remem- 
bered it — it  was  she  who  had  now  come  to 
offer  to  share  in  his  grief!  .  .  .  She  must  be 
very  sure,  to  have  dared  to  do  so,  sure  that 
he  was  weak  and  ripe  for  surrender.  .  .  .  He 
felt  her  hand  on  his  shoulder,  loving,  firm, 
intent  upon  tenderness.  .  .  .  She  had  watched 
him.  .  .  .  Worst  of  all,  she  was  right  in  her 
certainty;  he  desired  the  communion,  the 
right  to  share,  which  she  had  come  to  wrest 
from  him;  he  longed  to  lay  bare  his  fatherly 
grief  in  the  arms  of  his  accomplice,  to  weep 
over  his  child  in  the  arms  in  which  he  had 
begotten  her,  to  complete  in  the  arms  of  the 


154-  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

mother  the  alienation  of  his  being  in  those 
who  were  his  being.  She  had  done  well  to 
come.  He  was  expecting  her.  .  .  .  And, 
desperately,  he  felt  that  the  last  rampart 
of  his  identity  was  crumbling  away  at 
her  coming  and  also  that  he  was  glad  of 
it.  ... 

His  first  impulse  was  to  shrink  back,  and 
he  dried  his  tears  and  murmured : 

"  It  was  a  moment  of  weakness.  .  .  . 
I  gave  way  .  .  .  gave  way  .  .  .  weak- 
ly. ...  It  will  pass.  ...  I  shall  be 
strong.  .  .  ." 

She  was  brave  enough  to  persist.  Trem- 
blingly she  stooped  affectionately  over  him 
and  said: 

'  You  know,  you  often  say  that  I  too  am 
strong  .  .  .  a  '  child  of  the  fields '  .  .  .  that 
I  don't  suffer  from  nerves  like  you.  .  .  .  Do 
you  think  I  could  not  bear  your  grief  with 
you?  .  .  ." 

"  Yes.  .  .  .  You  are  brave  .  .  . ,"  he  said, 
putting  his  arm  round  her  waist.  '  You  al- 
ways show  a  bold  front.  .  .  .  But,  though 


DOWNFALL  155 

you  are  able  to  contain  your  grief  .  .  . ,  yet 
you  suffer  none  the  less.  ...  I  can  see  that 
.  .  .  and  it  is  shameful  of  me  to  add  to  what 
you  have  to  bear.  .  .  ." 

She  came  nearer  to  him  and  said: 
"  And  you  often  say  that  I  can  see  things 
more  clearly  than  you  .  .  . ,  that  I  see  things 
as  they  are.  ...  I  am  sure  you  are  seeing 
more  trouble  than  there  is.  ...  Did  you 
think  she  would  be  able  to  get  up  to- 
day .  .  .?  ...  But  I  agree  that  it  is  very 
sad  that  we  should  have  to  wait  for  another 
six  months.  .  .  ." 

"  Six  months! "  —All  his  sorrow  came  back 
to  him  now,  he  could  no  longer  contain  it, 
and,  having  found  a  meet  channel  for  it,  he 
let  it  loose  in  full  flood—  "  Six  months!  Do 
you  think  I  am  to  be  taken  in  by  what  they 
say?  Do  you  think  I  didn't  see  the  way  in 
which  they  looked  at  each  other?  Their 
anxious  manner?  That  there  is  no  improve- 
ment? Do  you  want  me  to  believe  that  you 
did  not  see  it  too?  .  .  .  Did  you  not  see  how, 

this  evening,  our  little  darling,  who  has  al- 

11 


156  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

ways  been  so  gentle,  so  terribly  considerate, 
in  trying  to  hide  her  suffering  from  us — did 
you  not  see  how  she  tried  to  be  gay  and  cheer- 
ful?— because  she  sees  that  it  hurts  us  too 
much,  because  we  are  not  strong  enough  to 
hide  our  suffering  from  her.  .  .  .  Don't  you 
find  something  horrible  in  a  child  of  her  age 
being  as  human  as  that?  .  .  .  Six  months! 
.  .  .  She  will  spend  years  cooped  up  like  that. 
.  .  .  Years.  .  .  .  And  when  she  is  released, 
she  will  be  a  cripple.  .  .  .  And  then,  how- 
ever much  we  watch  over  her,  and  take  care 
of  her,  and  thrust  aside  everything  that  might 
hurt  her,  her  life  will  be  a  thing  of  constant 
grief,  from  one  moment  to  another.  .  .  . 
Think  of  her  in  the  gardens.  .  .  .  Yes,  I 
know.  People  are  human  and  will  tell  their 
children:  'You  must  not  refuse  to  play  with 
little  Suzanne  because  she  is  a  cripple.'  And 
they  will  let  her  take  part  in  their  games 
'  like  any  other  child,*  considerately.  .  .  . 
Children  are  like  us:  it  gives  them  a  mo- 
ment's flattery  not  to  be  brutal.  .  .  .  Then 
they  will  suddenly  begin  a  running  game — 


DOWNFALL  157 

children  always  run — they  will  run  races, 
'  who'll  get  there  first? '  .  .  .  And  she  will 
be  in  their  way.  .  .  .  And  they  will  make 
her  feel  it.  ...  And  she  will  cry.  .  .  .  And 
then  think  of  the  children's  parties.  ...  Oh! 
She  will  dance  too!  .  .  .  The  bigger  girls  will 
come  and  dance  with  her,  and  they  will  make 
room  for  her  in  the  round  dances.  .  .  .  But 
when  they  get  excited,  and  lose  their  heads 
and  become  really  gay,  when  all  the  children 
begin  to  feel  that  they  are  moving  in  a  giddy 
whirligig,  going  faster  and  faster,  wilder  and 
wilder,  a  crazy  whirligig  of  which  they  are  to 
be  the  creators  and  the  creatures,  when  they 
reach  a  triumphant  height  of  mastery,  then 
she  will  creep  out  of  the  whirling  throng,  and 
she  will  come  and  sit  by  us  and  watch  them, 
and  she  will  say  nothing,  so  as  not  to 
hurt  us  and  we  too  will  talk  of  something 
else  " 

v   J  >l    .      •      •      • 

"  Stop,  stop,"  cried  Clemence,  holding  him 
pressed  close  to  her,  and  weeping.  '  You 
are  breaking  my  heart.  ..." 

But  implacably  he  went  on,  torturing  her, 


158  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

making  her  his  own,  impregnating  her  with 
his  fatherly  grief : 

"  But  all  that  is  nothing.  .  .  .  The  worst 
is  yet  to  come,  when  she  sees  her  girl  friends 
disappear  one  by  one  down  the  paths  in  the 
gardens,  hand  in  hand  with  their  lovers,  meet- 
ing in  trust  and  love  and  troth-plight.  .  .  . 
Oh!  Think  of  the  niceness  and  the  elaborate 
care  with  which  her  friends  will  come  and 
tell  her  of  their  joys.  .  .  .  And  they  will 
never  be  able  to  conceal  their  joy.  .  .  .  And 
she  will  have  to  rejoice  with  them.  .  .  .  And 
she  too  will  have  longed  to  give  her  life  in 
trust  and  love:  she  too  might  have  been  able 
to  win  a  lover's  pledge,  to  leave  her  home, 
plight  her  troth  and  cleave  to  her  lover.  .  .  . 
But  men  will  not  marry  an  invalid.  .  .  .  And 
she  will  go  to  the  houses  of  her  young  married 
friends.  She  will  be  intimate  with  them.  She 
will  be  their  friend,  their  real  friend,  the 
friend  of  whom  none  of  them  will  be  afraid, 
the  friend  to  whom  they  will  '  tell  every- 
thing ' — except  the  ultimate  secrets  of 
womanhood  and  marriage.  .  .  .  And  she  will 


DOWNFALL  159 

see  their  nurseries  and  their  lovely  children 
sleeping.  .  .  .  And  she  will  think  of  the 
children  she  might  have  had,  and  how  she 
would  have  loved  them.  ...  It  will  be  her 
lot  to  nurse  the  children  of  other  women.  .  .  ." 

"  Stop,  stop." 

"  And  we  two  will  still  be  by  her  side  to 
stay  her  hurt,  to  give  her  the  illusion  of  love. 
.  .  .  But  when  we  are  gone,  she  will  be  left 
all  alone  by  the  fireside,  with  some  old  maid, 
with  nothing  left,  with  no  interest  in  the 
world.  .  .  .  Hers  will  have  been  a  life  of 
unbroken  misery,  humiliation,  absolute  nega- 
tion. .  .  .  And  we  shall  be  responsible  for 
it.  .  .  ." 

Then  he  burst  out  sobbing  and  let  his  head 
fall  on  Clemence's  bosom:  he  clung  to  her, 
pressed  close,  body  to  body,  they  who  to- 
gether had  brought  this  misery  to  pass  and 
together  wept  over  it;  and  he  felt  in  that 
embrace,  and  in  the  warm  response  she  made, 
that  everything  that  yet  remained  distinct 
and  clear  in  him,  the  last  vestiges  of  his  lib- 
erty and  his  intellect,  melted  away;  he  clung 


160  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

to  her  in  the  frenzy  of  his  supreme  surrender, 
and  drank  his  fill  of  self-forgetfulness.  And 
she,  even  as  she  wept  over  the  picture  he  had 
drawn  for  her,  pressed  his  dear  head  against 
her  heart,  holding  him  so  for  the  first  time, 
for  the  first  time  knowing  that  he  was 
hers:  broken  and  in  despair  she  knew  not 
whether  her  tears  came  from  her  sorrow  as  a 
mother  or  from  her  happiness  as  a  wife; 
through  her  sobs  she  thought  of  the  wasted 
days,  and  like  another  wife  finding  her  hus- 
band again  in  the  evening  of  her  youth,  she 
cried  from  the  depths  of  her  heart:  "  God  has 
not  suffered  us  to  enjoy  together  the  days  of 
our  youth."  .  .  .  They  stood  so  for  a  long 
time,  weeping,  clasped  in  each  other's  arms, 
feeling  the  impiety  of  meeting  in  such  a  pas- 
sionate embrace  through  the  sufferings  of 
their  child.  .  .  . 

Their  emotion  ebbed.  .  .  .  Keeping  her 
arm  round  her  husband's  neck,  gently  slip- 
ping away  from  his  embrace,  she  sat  down 
on  the  arm  of  the  chair.  She  took  up  the 
handkerchief  which  he  had  left  on  his  desk 


DOWNFALL  161 

and,  mopping  her  eyes  with  it,  she  said 
through  her  tears: 

"  How  cruel  you  are.  .  .  .  And  how  you 
exaggerate.  .  .  .  You  seem  to  take  a  delight 
in  hurting  us.  ...  How  do  you  know  that 
she  will  be  a  cripple?  .  .  .  And  even  if  she 
were,  ...  it  would  only  be  very  slight.  .  .  . 
Very  slight.  .  .  .  She  will  meet  with  humilia- 
tion! Other  people  meet  with  it  too,  each  af- 
ter their  kind  .  .  . ,  because  they  are  ugly  .  .  . , 
because  they  are  poor  .  .  . ,  and  their  hu- 
miliation may  be  worse  than  hers.  .  .  .  She 
will  have  a  lovely  face  .  .  . ,  she  will  be  a 
charming  girl.  .  .  .  Just  think  how  people 
love  her :  strangers  .  .  . ,  servants  .  .  . ,  every- 
body. .  .  .  Did  you  ever  know  a  charming 
creature  not  be  loved  because  she  is  slightly 
crippled?  .  .  .  You  are  always  living  in 
theories.  .  .  ." 

He  listened  to  her  and  his  being  melted 
into  hers.  .  .  .  What  she  was  saying  was  the 
ruin  of  all  that  he  respected;  it  was  the  ac- 
ceptance of  happiness  in  mutilation,  the  ac- 
ceptance of  the  relative.  .  .  .  He  let  her  go 


162  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

on  and  offered  no  further  resistance.  .  .  . 
She  dried  the  last  vestiges  of  her  tears  and 
went  on: 

"  Besides  ...  I  don't  understand  you. 
.  .  .  You  sit  there  considering  the  child's  life 
and  you  attach  certain  names  to  it  .  .  . , 
names  which  hurt  you  horribly:  humiliation, 
negation!  .  .  .  Why  do  you  always  want  to 
find  names  for  things?  Why  do  you  always 
want  to  judge  everything?  ..." 

"It  is  true,"  he  muttered.  '  That  is  our 
mania,  the  obsession  from  which  we  '  think- 
ers'  suffer.  .  .  ." 

But  this  perpetual  substitution  of  the  idea 
for  the  reality  was  also  his  greatness.  He 
knew  that.  .  .  .  And  he  renounced  his  great- 
ness.— "  I  am  not  like  that.  ...  I  take  her 
life  quite  humbly,  without  asking  what  it  is. 
.  .  .  Every  day  I  try  to  bring  the  dear  child 
a  little  happiness.  .  .  .  And  next  day,  too, 
if  I  can,  I  try  again.  .  .  .  Believe  me.  Help 
her  instead  of  judging  her.  .  .  .  Come.  Yes- 
terday I  read  about  a  toy  that  would  give 
her  pleasure.  ...  I  went  to  Paris  and 


DOWNFALL  163 

bought  it.  ...  Come,  let  us  go  and  put  it 
on  her  bed,  so  that  she  may  smile  when  she 
wakes  up.  .  .  .  To-morrow  we  will  find  some- 
thing else.  .  .  ." 

She  led  him  towards  her  room.  He  fol- 
lowed her  tottering  like  a  drunken  man,  with 
a  confused  consciousness  of  the  immensity 
of  his  fall,  and  of  sinking,  sinking  into  real- 
ity .  .  . ,  into  the  narrow  confines  of  family 
life.  .  .  .  She  took  a  large  plush  bear  out  of 
a  cardboard  box.  .  .  .  Then  they  crept  along 
the  passage  .  .  .  and  stole  up  to  the  child's 
bedside.  .  .  .  She  held  his  hand,  as  if  to  sup- 
port him  in  this  approach  of  love,  unprotected 
by  pride.  ...  So  they  stood,  bending  over 
the  child.  .  .  .  She  opened  her  eyes,  saw  the 
toy  and  the  two  of  them  standing  there  close 
together,  looking  at  her,  beseeching  her,  im- 
ploring her.  .  .  .  She  smiled  at  them  in  for- 
gireness.  .  .  . 


From  that  day  on  he  gave  up  the  strug- 
gle.    He  was  entirely  filled  with  love,  aban- 


164  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

doned    thought    and    every    exercise    of    the 
mind.  .  .  . 

He  neither  despised  nor  honoured  his  sur- 
render of  these  things,  for  he  had  so  utterly 
fallen  that  he  had  sworn  henceforth  never  to 
seek  knowledge,  and  to  live  his  life  without 
judging  it. 

Sometimes  in  the  newspapers  or  in  conver- 
sation he  would  hap  on  the  words  "  evolution," 
or  God,  or  "  liberty."  .  .  .  And  would  think: 
"  I  used  to  have  ideas  about  these  things, 
about  the  ideas  of  these  things.  ...  It  is  no 
good  thinking  about  them!  ..." 

Often,  as  he  looked  at  Suzanne,  he  would 
think  of  that  "  desire  "  in  him  which  had  be- 
come a  "  thing,"  and  that  "  tendency  "  which 
had  become  "  flesh."  .  .  .  And  he  would  dis- 
cover in  his  mind  a  new  delight  in  those 
"  mysterious "  things,  before  which  a  man 
can  only  stand  amazed,  and  towards  which 
the  mind  of  its  very  essence  cannot  approach. 
He  accepted  his  downfall. 


DOWNFALL  165 

Sometimes,  as  he  watched  Clemence — sit- 
ting enigmatically  with  the  corners  of  her 
mouth  turned  up,  so  serene  now  in  her  hap- 
piness with  Suzanne  and  himself — he  would 
begin  to  think  that  she  was  secretly  glad  of 
the  child's  illness  which  had  brought  her  hus- 
band back  to  her  and  robbed  him  of  his  in- 
tellect. .  .  .  And  he  bore  her  no  ill-will. 

They  returned  to  Berck.  .  .  .  He  could 
now  tolerate  the  people  there.  .  .  .  He  was 
amazed  to  find  himself  thinking  that  sickness 
and  disease  comprised  humanity,  and  how 

The  infinite  sadness  of  Golgotha's  bitter  cry 

Had  in  itself  contained  sufficient  agony 

To  express  humanity! 

.  .  .  They  were  talking  one  day  of  a  dis- 
covery which  might  transform  the  whole  of 
man's  ideas  concerning  the  nature  of  matter. 

"  All  that  sort  of  thing,"  said  the  father 
of  one  of  the  children  to  Felix,  "  is  not  worth 
a  kiss  from  one  of  these  little  people!  .  .  ." 

"  No  doubt,"  he  said,  "  no  doubt. 


Ill 

WITH  her  delicate  profile  turned  towards 
him,  sitting  under  the  light  of  the  lamp, 
Clemence  was  plying  her  needle.  On  the 
other  side  of  the  table,  biting  her  lip,  busily 
drawing  lines  with  her  ruler — she  had  been 
two  years  at  school — Suzanne  was  "  doing 
her  lessons."  And  at  the  back  of  the  room, 
in  the  shadow,  sunk  deep  in  his  chair,  Felix 
was  watching  them.  .  .  .  After  all,  the  child 
was  happy.  .  .  .  Most  of  the  sufferings  in- 
herent in  her  infirmity  had  been  abolished  by 
the  tenderness  he  gave  her,  by  the  subtle  skill 
in  consolation  which  he  found  in  his  love  for 
her.  .  .  .  He  would  be  able  also  to  wipe  out  the 
sufferings  that  lay  in  wait  for  the  child  as 
she  grew  older.  .  .  .  He  would  find  the  right 
words  to  say.  .  .  .  He  would  live  long  enough 
to  be  able  to  help  her  through  to  an  age  when 
no  more  trials  would  lie  before  her.  .  .  .  And 
Clemence  also  was  happy  in  the  close  affec- 

166 


DOWNFALL  167 

tion  which  he  now  gave  her.  ...  It  was  a 
fine  thing  that  he  had  done,  or  would  have 
done,  to  have  created  happiness  for  these  two, 
and  the  atmosphere  of  charity  in  which  he 
now  lay  at  his  ease.  ...  It  was  beautiful. 
...  It  was  not  only  sweet.  It  was  beauti- 
ful. .  .  .  Beautiful.  ...  So  he  had  at  last 
reached  the  love  which  had  entirely  absorbed 
him;  he  had  reached  the  point,  not  only  of 
living  sweetly  in  that  love,  unresistingly  and 
without  regret,  but  also  of  admiring  and 
honouring  it.  ...  So  then  he  would  no 
longer  live  his  life  without  daring  to  con- 
sider it,  but  would  find  purpose  and  order 
in  his  being,  the  conjunction  of  his  soul  in 

the  life  he  was  living 

So,  fortified  by  the  peace  of  it  all,  in  his 
heart  he  suffered  a  supreme  hope  to  spring 
into  being;  the  hope  that  the  old  life 
of  the  mind,  which  he  had  worshipped  and 
had  so  bitterly  deplored,  would  now,  from  the 
lofty  height  of  his  love,  be  scorned  and  seen 
to  be  base  and  ugly.  ...  If  that  could  be, 
then  he  would  find  consummate  peace.  .  .  . 


168  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

Then,  for  the  first  time  for  two  years,  he  ven- 
tured to  call  to  mind  his  old  way  of  living, 
when  he  used  to  leave  them  in  the  evening  and 
go  and  work.  .  .  .  Trembling  like  a  sick  man 
just  risen  from  his  bed,  he  began  slowly  to 
discover  these  relics  of  his  heart;  he  saw  him- 
self after  dinner,  kissing  them  both  on  the 
brow  and  then  going  back  into  his  study  to 
be  alone  with  himself,  unveiling  his  thought, 
rising  from  his  being  to  the  idea  of  his  being. 
.  .  .  And  it  all  seemed  beautiful  to  him.  .  .  . 
But  he  wished  to  flout  it  .  .  .  ;  and  now  he 
called  to  mind  the  vision  of  a  life  which 
would  have  consisted  in  pursuing  that  exist- 
ence in  spite  of  the  child's  illness,  leaving  the 
two  women  to  their  misery,  throwing  them  a 
kind  word  now  and  then,  then  withdrawing 
into  his  own  life,  keeping  his  heart  intact,  and 
still  soaring  from  Being  into  Consciousness. 
. .  .  Ah!  Such  a  life  would  have  been  odious. 
.  .  .  But  he  did  not  flout  it.  ...  And  now  he 
felt  that  in  his  heart  of  hearts  he  thought 
it  more  beautiful,  more  courageous,  more 
holy.  .  .  . 


DOWNFALL  169 

He  wrestled  with  himself.  .  .  .  Yes.  It 
would  have  been  more  beautiful  to  leave  all 
that  misery  for  the  study  of  Ethics  or  Criti- 
cism. .  .  .  But  what  had  he  to  gain  by  doing 
so?  ...  But  he  knew  that  it  is  the  effort  of 
thinking  and  not  its  success  which  is  comely 
in  the  sight  of  the  God  he  honoured.  .  .  . 

And  he  wrestled  with  himself.  .  .  .  What! 
Should  he  have  left  the  two  unhappy  crea- 
tures alone  in  their  misery,  and  deprived  them 
of  the  smile  which  he  could  bring  to  their  faces 
by  doing  so  little,  merely  by  staying  with 
them!  .  .  .  But  he  felt,  in  the  torment  which 
he  suffered  at  the  idea  of  leaving  them,  that 
that  would  have  been  the  real  sacrifice  and 
that  he  had  only  done  what  he  preferred.  .  .  . 

Then  he  abandoned  his  resistance ;  accepting 
the  sorrowful  consciousness  of  his  love  for 
what  he  now  knew  to  be  lost  for  ever,  in  his 
heart  he  suffered  to  spring  forth  the  worship 
that  was  welling  up  in  it  of  the  life  wherein 
the  mind  would  have  triumphed  over  love. 
And  from  the  profoundest  and  most  religious 
depths  of  his  being,  not  with  the  fervour  with 


170  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

which  a  man  embraces  the  creatures  of  his 
blood,  but  with  that  different  and  deep-seated 
fervour  with  which  a  man  cleaves  to  those 
who  are  of  his  moral  race,  he  took  to  his 
heart,  knowing  that  he  would  see  them  no 
more,  the  few  rare  men  he  could  find,  who 
through  the  ages  had  really  broken  free  of  all 
human  love  and  had  burned  for  the  Idea; 
such  men  as  you,  O  mighty  thinkers  of 
Greece,  not  you,  who,  strolling  in  pleasant 
gardens,  discourse  amiably  of  things  human, 
the  only  subject  of  your  conversations,  in  the 
sweet  humours  of  friendship,  but  you,  O 
mighty  solitaries,  who,  dead  to  the  world  in 
your  towers  in  Crete  and  Sicily,  scan  the 
nature  of  Numbers  and  Movement;  and  you, 
O  great  thinker  of  Rome,  from  your  birth 
dedicated  to  all  the  joys  of  the  heart,  and  yet 
in  the  darkness  pondering  upon  the  nature 
of  things;  and  you,  O  Master  of  Ravenna, 
communing  with  him  whom  neither  the  love 
of  a  son  nor  the  tears  of  his  Penelope  could 
keep  from  his  desire  to  stride  through  the 
world  and  knowledge;  and  you,  above  all,  O 


DOWNFALL  171 

great  monks, — not  you,  the  great  men  of 
prayer,  swooning  away  in  your  cloistered 
cells  over  the  wounds  of  a  human  body,  not 
you,  the  consolers  and  comforters,  drinking 
human  love  from  the  lips  of  the  dying,  nor 
you,  the  gospellers  and  preachers,  fiercely 
and  in  joy  striving  to  mould  the  human 
race  .  .  . ,  but  you,  O  great  contemplatives, 
living  alone  in  your  cells  at  Oxford  or  Con- 
stance, brotherless,  without  penitents,  or  poor, 
or  disciples,  truly  dead  to  all  "  created  love," 
whose  Faith,  unacquainted  with  Charity, 
sought  ever  the  meaning  of  God  and  not  His 
love.  .  .  .  And  I  have  failed  to  become  one 
of  you!  ...  I  have  fallen  into  the  toils  of 
the  flesh.  ...  I  have  loved  my  child,  even  as 
the  beasts  of  the  forest,  even  as  the  beasts  of 
the  field.  .  .  .  And  now  all  is  at  an  end.  .  .  . 
Even  my  worship  of  you  will  leave  me.  .  .  . 
To-morrow  I  shall  only  be  a  thing  that 
loves. 


The  child  for  some  moments  past  had  been 

sitting  on  his  knee.  .  .  .  And  as  he  chanted 

12 


172  THE  YOKE  OF  PITY 

inwardly  his  hymn  to  the  God  of  the  Idea, 
he  pressed  her  to  his  heart  with  an  embrace, 
a  warmth  that  seemed  to  him  to  come  from 
his  desire  to  protect  her  from  the  vengeance 
of  the  God  whom  he  was  deriding,  while  it 
came  indeed  from  his  desire  to  associate  with 
his  misery  the  creature  whom  in  all  the 
world  he  loved  the  most.  ...  So  he  sat, 
bending  over  his  beloved  burden,  gazing  up- 
ward to  the  heaven  of  the  elect  from  which 
she  had  driven  him,  the  heaven  which  he 
would  never  enter,  the  heaven  which  would 
soon  be  for  ever  hidden  from  his  sight.  .  .  . 
All  there  were  silent.  .  .  .  Clemence  smiled 
and  went  on  with  her  sewing.  .  .  .  Slowly, 
with  her  eyes  cast  down,  in  a  penetrating 
voice  that  seemed  to  come  from  far  away, 
the  child  said:  "Father,  what  are  you 
thinking?  " 


AUTHOR'S  NOTE 

(To  THE  1STH  FRENCH  EDITION) 

AMONG  the  criticisms  of  this  book  there  has  been 
one  so  unanimous  that  it  is  impossible  for  me  to 
refrain  from  meeting  it. 

This  criticism  is  directed  towards  the  second  part 
and,  in  substance,  amounts  to  this :  I  am  told  that  the 
conflict  I  have  set  up  between  intellectual  activity 
and  the  life  of  the  heart,  and  my  declaration  of  the 
impossibility  of  their  co-existence,  is  purely  arbi- 
trary, artificial,  "  contrived,"  and  that  it  is  quite 
possible  to  live  an  intellectual  life  and  at  the  same 
time  to  love  a  sick  child,  etc.,  etc.  .  .  . 

My  answer  is  simple  and  brief:  Such  criticism 
is  a  condemnation  of  half-pressure  intellectual  activ- 
ity and  what  I  was  dealing  with  was  intellectual 
activity  at  the  highest  pressure. 

It  is  very  sure  that  half-pressure  intellectual  ac- 
tivity— like  that  of  most  of  our  doctors,  lawyers, 
professors  (to  accept  the  examples  produced  for 
my  benefit) — is  compatible  with  love  for  a  sick  child. 

(But  even  so,  such  a  love  must  not  be  too  violent.) 

173 


174  AUTHOR'S  NOTE 

Obviously  every  one  will  admit  that  intellectual  activ- 
ity at  the  highest  pressure — like  that  of  a  seeker, 
or  an  active  contemplation  of  any  kind — demands 
the  entire  absorption  of  the  soul  wherein  it  dwells 
and  cannot  co-exist  with  any  passion  of  the  heart. 
Now,  let  me  say  again,  that  it  is  this  and  no  other 
kind  of  intellectual  activity  which  I  have  here  treated. 

One  of  my  critics  (in  the  Action  Frtmfaise, 
15  December,  1912)  declares  that  as  a  student  of 
philosophy  he  indulges  in  a  certain  amount  of  mental 
activity  concerning  philosophic  questions  and  fails  to 
see  why  it  should  disappear  because  of  some  illness 
befalling  one  of  his  children.  ...  I  am  perfectly 
willing  to  believe  that  the  philosophic  activity  of  this 
excellent  person  is  compatible  with  love  for  a  sick 
child :  but  of  such  I  have  not  written. 

May  I  be  permitted  to  recall  the  words  in  which 
I  defined  my  hero's  mental  application?  (Page  100) : 
"  He  had  just  discovered  the  intellectual  life — the 
real  life  of  the  intellect, — not  the  dallying  with  ideas 
that  had  been  familiar  to  him  as  to  all  the  men  of 
his  class  on  leaving  college,  not  the  fluttering  of 
doctrines  between  a  call  and  a  dinner-party,  but  a 
passionate,  permanent,  exclusive  possession,  spend- 
ing weeks  together  in  unearthing  a  concept,  with 
never  a  thought  for  anything  else — the  fevered  toil 


AUTHOR'S  NOTE  175 

of  such  research,  and  the  agony  of  being  baffled,  and 
the  joys  of  triumph,  and  the  breathless  fructifying 
of  one  idea  by  another,  with  his  whole  being  at 
stretch  to  discover  whether  such  and  such  an  idea 
would  beget  such  and  such  another  or  its  opposite." 
And  again  (page  138)  :  "  Indeed  it  was  still  possible 
for  him  to  observe,  to  read,  to  deduct;  to  approach 
ideas,  to  come  in  contact  with  their  external  form, 
to  follow  all  the  miserable  processes  which  are  called 
Intelligence,  by  way  of  crushing  them.  .  .  .  But 
the  real  power  of  thought,  the  possession  of  the  Idea, 
the  occupation  of  it,  the  penetration  to  its  inmost, 
the  erethismus  of  the  mind  which  men  pretend  to 
confuse  with  the  emotion  of  the  heart,  and  the  quick- 
ened idea,  the  abstract  made  flesh,  and  the  *  grip  ' 
of  which  he  was  so  proud,  the  fierce  tension  of  the 
mind  in  its  grasp  of  an  idea,  in  holding  it  against 
the  hundred  ideas  which  would  gather  round  it  and 
try  to  beat  him  back,  all  these  cherished  powers  of 
his  were  now  for  ever  lost  and  submerged  in  the 
action  of  his  heart.  ..."  Dare  I  also  remind  my 
critics  that  the  problems  attacked  by  my  hero  (page 
106ff. ;  the  distinction  between  two  ideas  of  move- 
ment confounded  under  one  appellation,  the  distinc- 
tion between  the  idea  of  the  miraculous  and  the  idea 
of  the  discontinuous,  etc.  .  .  .  )  are  not,  as  certain 


176  AUTHOR'S  NOTE 

persons  (for  whom  there  is  every  excuse  in  their 
scant  knowledge  of  these  things)  have  said,  "  scraps 
of  college  jargon  "  or  "  pages  from  text-books,"  but 
questions  which  are  left  unconsidered  for  the  very 
good  reason  that  the  mind  which  tackles  them  must 
of  necessity  rise  to  a  really  inventive  activity  ?  That 
should  be  enough,  to  my  way  of  thinking,  to  make 
every  sincere  reader  agree  that  the  intellectual 
activity  here  in  question  is  of  the  kind  which  de- 
mands the  supremest  concentration  and  tension  from 
the  man  who  is  possessed  by  it  and  cannot  fail  to 
disappear  when  his  soul  is  absorbed  by  another 
passion.1 

These  passages  also  seem  to  me  to  meet  the  re- 
proach which  has  been  levelled  at  my  work  that  I 
admit  of  no  degrees  in  the  activity  of  the  mind  and 
refuse  to  allow  Felix,  after  he  has  been  seduced  by 
his  love  for  his  child,  to  return,  in  a  less  degree,  to 
that  activity;  but  when  it  is  remembered  that  we 

1  Some  of  the  critics,  let  me  hasten  to  say,  have  understood  this 
perfectly  :  "  Can  a  man,"  says  M.  Leon  Werter,  "  at  once  love 
his  daughter  and  systematically  seek  the  truth  ?  No.  Not  if  he 
is  possessed  by  an  absolute  and  carnal  love  for  the  abstract." 
And  the  same  critic  on  this  point  quotes  the  words  of  Mme.  Perier 
about  her  brother,  Blaise  Pascal  :  "  So  it  was  that  he  made  it 
plain  that  there  was  nothing  to  bind  him  to  those  he  loved  .  .  . 
and  that  we  did  not  see  that  in  cherishing  and  suffering  such  ties 
we  were  occupying  a  heart  which  should  belong  to  God  alone." 


AUTHOR'S  NOTE  177 

are  dealing  here  with  inventive  activity,  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  every  one  will  agree  that  there  can  be 
no  question  of  degrees.  Of  course  it  is  understood 
that  Felix  would  be  able  to  go  on  reading  and  taking 
notes  and  being  interested  in  problems,  and  that  he 
might  even  produce  pleasant  little  accounts  of  his 
studies  and  agreeable  review  articles ;  but  such  activ- 
ity as  that  is  by  no  means  a  "  degree  "  of  his  former 
activity,  nor  will  it  in  any  way  soften,  but  must 
rather  accentuate,  his  lasting  grief  at  the  loss  of 
it.  ...  Finally,  it  is  also  admitted  that,  as  I 
have  been  assured,  if  his  intellectual  passion  had 
really  been  so  strong,  it  would  master  his  love  and 
he  would  go  on  with  his  work:  but  his  passion  is 
not  strong  enough,  as  is  made  perfectly  clear  ("I 
have  not  been  able  to  become  one  of  you."),  and  it  is 
precisely  in  that  failure  that  the  drama  consists. 

And  now  I  am  not  so  simple  as  to  believe  that 
I  shall  disarm  my  adversaries  by  pointing  out  to 
them  that  we  are  here  dealing  with  intellectual  pas- 
sion. On  the  contrary,  I  am  persuaded  that  it  is 
precisely  because  I  have  described  this  singularly 
unpopular  passion  1  that  I  have  incurred  their  hos- 

1  One  of  the  forms  which  this  unpopularity  takes  is  the  brand- 
ing of  intellectual  passion  by  calling  it  absolutism  and  intolerance, 
terms  which  in  these  days  are  so  generously  lavished  upon  passion 
of  any  kind. 


178  AUTHOR'S  NOTE 

tility,  except  it  is  because  I  have  described  my  hero's 
religious  worship  of  the  passion  which  slips  away 
from  him.  It  may  be  the  only  merit  of  this  book 
that  it  has  brought  into  the  clear  light  of  day  the 
extraordinary  detestation  which  nowadays  is  felt  for 
the  religion  of  the  mind,  and  that  an  author  who 
has  delighted  in  its  description  is  therefore,  in  this 
year  of  grace,  treated  by  supposedly  cultured  people 
as  though  he  had  written  an  apologia  of  robbery  or 
murder. 


BNWIN  BROTHERS,  LIMITED,  THE  GREBHAM  PRESS,  WOKINQ  AND  LONDON. 


UNtVERWTY  Of  «JJNO»-URBANA 


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